


When In Rome

by qqueenofhades



Series: Ancient Rome [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qqueenofhades/pseuds/qqueenofhades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Historical AU. When a slave gladiator, Killian mac Dáithí, catches the eye of Emma Aurelia, the praetor's daughter, they are plunged into a world of intrigue, treachery, danger, and forbidden love, among the high halls of power in the Roman Empire and the shadowy men who rule it. Captain Swan with some Outlaw Queen. Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The hot Mediterranean sun beat down through the silken canopy erected to shield the praetor’s family in their enjoyment of the gladiatorial games held to celebrate the emperor Hadrian’s safe return from his travels, the pacification of the Roman British rebels, the construction of the great wall against the barbaric Caledonians, and the completion of the rebuilding of the Pantheon. The empire was at peace, the coffers bursting with trade, and patricians and plebeians alike had been promised a spectacle they would never forget. The amphitheatre was filled brimful with people, and Emma could just pick out her father’s head from where David Aurelius sat with the other senators and consuls. As the _praetor urbanus_ in the imperial administration, he was rarely allowed to leave Rome, a state of affairs that Emma found very dull. David, a more permissive husband than most, maintained an allowance for his wife, daughter, and widowed stepmother-in-law to visit his villa on the coast, but that was the extent of their travels. Maria, Emma, and Regina were generally left to concoct their own amusements, remaining discreetly out of sight as was proper for the womenfolk of such a great man, and the games were their first proper outing in months.

Emma adjusted her stola, watching intently as the combatants entered the ring to the roar of the crowd. The first round, they had been promised, was a dual feature: a pair of savage British fighters, taken home in chains from the rebellion, against a pair of lethally trained Roman gladiators. The crowd had their favorites, and cheered the gladiators lustily, but Emma was watching the two rebels. One was lean and dark as a Celt, the other tall and blonde. They had been supplied shortswords, shields and armor, and they handled them as if they knew quite well what to do with them. Around her, the spectators were taking wagers, reckoning that the barbarians wouldn’t last long against proper soldiers. Who, indeed, could stand against Rome?

"One denarius," Emma said, ignoring the censorious look from her mother. It was not considered seemly for a woman to wager, but she had the money. She dug the gold coin from her purse and held it out. "On the rebels."

This was met with further surprised looks: a praetor’s daughter openly backing the opposition? She was just wondering if she’d gone too far when Regina smiled sleekly. “I’ll better that wager,” she said. “Two on the rebels.”

Emma met her step-grandmother’s eyes in some surprise, but Regina shrugged, as opaque as ever, and pulled her scarf up over her dark hair. She always seemed to have an ulterior motive; one of the most beautiful and infamous women in Rome, she was rumored to have had affairs with powerful men of every stripe, and commanded a network of clients as influential as any patron’s. Emma doubted that every scandalous story about her was true, but as gossip was the empire’s third-most-important fixation after taxes and war, there were certainly plenty to pass the time. Living with her was like living with a coiled venomous serpent, always potentially prepared to strike. Emma never felt comfortable turning her back for long.

Before she could ask what Regina had meant by backing her, the bell sounded. The combatants took their positions, and after an invocation to the gods and the emperor, the match began.

No matter how hard she tried, Emma couldn’t take her eyes off the dark-haired rebel. He fought like a man possessed, clearly knowing that the victor’s laurel or death were the only possible outcomes in the arena. Roman society accepted citizens from every far-flung corner of its domains, but this man would only ever be a slave, his only hope of winning his freedom lying in prowess and glory. Where had he come from, in Britain? How had he found himself here before a baying crowd, fighting to the death to laud their victory?

Emma shifted uncomfortably, glancing over at Regina. To her surprise, she found the older woman was also watching one of the rebels just as intently — the tall, blonde one. They shared an unspoken look, as if promising not to mention it, as the combat grew ever more intense and bloody. The rebels were clearly looking out for each other, guarding each other’s backs, and their display of skill had the public sentiment slowly but surely shifting to their side. When the dark-haired man was the first to take down his foe, the commons roared. Emma wondered what the senators thought of that, if they were wondering if it had been a bad idea after all to allow the British rebels any sign of competence or victory in this spectacle. Surely they would order the lions released, the terms of the game changed back.

If that was what they meant, it was too late. The blonde-haired man and his foe were still locked in combat — but a moment later a vicious slash took the gladiator’s arm off at the elbow, and a second dropped him like a stone. Bloodstained and sweating, teeth bared, the rebels stood back to back in the crimson-soaked sand, swords upthrust, as the colosseum thundered its approbation and Emma and Regina held out their hands to collect their denarii. Even as she tucked her winnings away, however, Emma knew this couldn’t last long. They couldn’t get away with it. It was blood the masses came to see, and defeat. Not like this.

The dark-haired gladiator stood very straight.

She thought his eyes were blue.

———————-

"Father," Emma said, when the games were done for the day and their slaves were leading them out to the chariot. "Who were those two men? The rebels?"

"What?" David appeared somewhat distressed by this choice of conversational topic. "Oh… prisoners from Britannia. They fought well, I suppose."

"Very well," Regina put in sleekly. She enjoyed tormenting her son-in-law and stepdaughter for their proper adherence to custom and protocol more than apparently anything. "What do you know about them?"

David frowned. “Why?”

"We’re only curious," Emma said blandly. "They were brave men."

"One’s a Hibernian. The dark one, Killian, I think they called him. The other some Saxon. Robin. They’ll be well feted tonight, I suppose." David frowned. "Doubtless not the outcome the emperor had in mind."

"I want to buy their freedom."

David Aurelius stared at his daughter. “Whatever for? They’re _slaves,_ Emma. Rebels. There’s nothing they can do but fight, and eventually die. It’s not fair, perhaps, but such is the way of the world. What would you do with them, take them into the household guard? They can’t be trusted. And after today…” He paused. “One of them must die at the other’s hand in the games tomorrow. The point is that Britannia has been subdued, not been made victorious.”

"Somebody erred rather grievously, then," Regina said maliciously. "They should have chosen two men with less to fight for."

David looked baffled at the idea that barbarians could have anything they possibly valued enough to believe in and defend. But as Emma and Regina had inexplicably teamed up against him as effectively as the rebels had in the arena, and he was not used to telling his daughter no, he sighed and turned to the servant at his side. “Go and find if the two British slaves are for sale. Hurry. And don’t let yourself be seen.”

The man bowed and hurried away, returning shortly with the news that regretfully, the slaves were not. Emperor Hadrian had his heart quite set on their combat tomorrow. While not a bloodthirsty or warlike man, instead rather of a peaceful and prosperous mind, Hadrian nonetheless keenly appreciated the power of spectacle. Letting the British rebels win, after the trouble and expense he had gone to to quash the uprising and build the great wall in the north, was not the sort of image he wished to promote at his triumphant homecoming.

"Not even for the _praetor urbanus?”_ David persisted. “Not even if it was his personal wish?”

Once again, the servant expressed his regret. It was royal decree.

David looked unhappy. He was likewise not the sort of man to enjoy butchery or bloodshed, and his keen sense of fair play was likewise something of an anomaly in the imperial administration and the forum, among bureaucrats and generals and imperators all cutting throats and scrambling to consolidate their own power and position. He suggested that Hadrian could avoid further embarrassment simply by making the slaves disappear, rather than parade them out and giving them further opportunity to win public sympathy. The end result of all his bargaining was that he, Emma, Regina, and a few guards and slaves were shown down into the dim stone catacombs beneath the colosseum, to where the rebels were being kept in preparation for their final fight.

Killian and Robin stood up as the praetor and his family entered. They were both still clad in their bronze armor, having apparently refused a wash and a festival banquet; they would not give their captors any further amusement, like dancing bears or talking parrots. Neither of the men spoke much Latin, but they made themselves quite clear. They would take no Roman sympathy, had no interest in Roman charity. They would refuse to fight each other tomorrow, and they knew they would die for it. After being stolen from Britannia, losing their wives (Killian’s named Milah, Robin’s named Marian) and their homes and their hope, they still had their honor. They would make an end as pleased them.

"What if I told them that they did not have to?" David asked the slave serving as interpreter. "That I was willing to purchase their freedom?"

Killian and Robin glanced at each other, clearly suspecting a trick. Why would the praetor do such a thing? Mercy? It was scarcely renowned as a Roman virtue. But it was given to them to understand that the praetor’s daughter and mother-in-law had taken a particular interest in them, had wagered on them to win their combat, and were quite insistent that they be freed. For the women, if they could accept it.

Killian regarded Emma coolly. She had never seen a man of such striking looks, or such utter darkness and hatred in his blue eyes. Likewise, Robin stared back at Regina without flinching, sparks clearly flying in the hot air. The desire not to be freed as the result of a woman’s pity was warring with the desire to survive, and both of them must possess that in spades, if they’d made it so far. Yet their bond was strong enough that rather than killing one and letting the other go, they’d made a pact to die together. Any Roman legion could respect and understand such loyalty, perhaps not even hope to match it.

Very well. The rebels agreed. They would accept the praetor buying their freedom from the arena, as soon as a message was sent to the emperor to receive his approval. David was a particular favorite of Hadrian’s; if anyone could hope to dissuade him from his chosen path, it was he. It took some time for the slave to return, but his tidings were good when he did. Hadrian had reluctantly given permission for David Aurelius to purchase both slaves, on condition that neither of them were spotted in public life again. If they caused any further trouble, they would be executed without trial or ceremony.

Emma, watching the two men, wondered uneasily just how well they would take to that prohibition. As they were handed over to the household slaves, she could still sense a stiffness in them, a refusal to look down at their captors. But it was done. They’d not fight.

As they were returning to the chariot, to drive to their villa on the seventh hill, Killian’s eyes met hers again. He smiled. He clearly had gone far past the place where he cared about such things as propriety and whether or not he should address a praetor’s daughter directly, and Emma was oddly and dangerously intrigued by his effrontery. And as he stepped past her, he whispered in her ear, in broken Latin, “ _Ave,_ beautiful. I hope you’re ready to play.”


	2. Chapter 2

In the days that followed, Emma did her best to prove to her parents that they had nothing to fear. She knew she had overstepped her bounds by insisting that her father purchase the slaves’ freedom, and yet all the while as she watched the spectacular conclusion to the gladiatorial games, the victors laureled and adored and the losers dragged out while boys in bronze collars shoveled sand over the bloodstains, all she could think of was how good that it wasn’t them. At the feast afterward in their villa on Palatine Hill, as _garum_ and olive oil and salt and wine and fine white loaves and nuts and cheeses were passed among the couches and torches flickered in the warm summer night, the wind blowing away the stench of the _insulae,_ the commoners’ apartments,crowded in the city center. Despite herself, she couldn’t help but wonder where the slaves were boarded, and how they bided. Her mother had refused to have them in the house, but nor could they be left to their own devices among the others. _I have put them in an impossible situation._ Deprived the emperor of his carefully crafted revenge, possibly drawn unwanted attention to her and her family’s loyalty among the bitterly competitive and cutthroat world of the Forum, and with no good reason to think she’d saved the men’s lives for anything more than a few days. _I should have just let them die. They are nothing to me._ Or perhaps –

“Emma?” Her father’s voice interrupted her grim preoccupations, and the sweet music of the cithara. “Emma, there’s. . . there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Startled, and knowing by his tone that it was not merely anyone, she rose, straightened her drapes anxiously, and inclined her head. Indeed, not just anyone. She recognized the man standing beside him at once: most high-ranking bureaucrats wore purple-edged togas, but this one wore one embroidered richly with gold. It was his nickname, _Aurum,_ though that was always whispered behind his back To his face they called him by his name, Gaius Flavius Cassianus, Consul and Commander of the Praetorian Guard – one of the most shadowy and powerful men in the entire empire, rumored to traffic in all kinds of esoteric and occult sorcery. Not a hardened legionnaire, but a slight, unprepossessing man who walked with a limp, he did not look like the sort to strike instant fear into everyone’s hearts, but his patronage system was unparalleled throughout the empire. Everyone in Rome and possibly abroad, no matter how important, was his client; it was whispered that Emperor Hadrian himself owed him a favor. In many real ways, this was the man who controlled the crown, and he was here at their villa for. . .?

Emma swallowed down a sudden nervousness, and held out her hand. “Emma Julia Aurelia, Consul. It is an honor.”

“No, dearie. The honor is mine.” He pressed her fingers to his lips in a brief, dry kiss. “May I be permitted to present my son? Gaius Baelius Cassianus, at your service.”

 _Oh._ Emma understood what this was about an instant too late, as a young man with dark curly hair and a crooked smile, six or seven years older than her, stepped forward as well and offered half a bow. “At your service,” he echoed, pressing her hand to his lips. “I’ve heard a great deal about the praetor’s daughter. Is it true you stole a chariot once?”

Emma opened her mouth in outrage, intending to demand how in Jupiter’s name that was a fit way to begin a conversation. But he was grinning again; clearly he had intended that to be funny, and when she glanced around for their respective fathers, she noticed that David and Gaius Flavius had conveniently melted into the crowd. “I was seventeen,” she said stiffly. “And I didn’t _steal_ it. What has that to do with anything, Cassianus?”

“Please. Call me Bae. Everyone does.” Another of those lopsided grins. He glanced around. “Splendid gathering. Can I offer you a drink?”

“I suppose,” Emma said tightly. She didn’t like being set up. What was more, her mind was sifting quickly through the countless reams of gossip, trying to match the name with the reputation. Like his father, word had it that Gaius Baelius was not precisely the most upstanding model of a citizen: that he was charming but untrustworthy, that he used his sinecure as a provincial customs collector to pocket profits intended for Hadrian’s purse, that he held wild revels for Bacchus and Dionysus with his gang of friends (the Lost Boys, they were called) and more. But to sack a corrupt bureaucrat in the imperial administration would only result in replacing him with a more corrupt one, and as no one wanted all the dirty little secrets controlled by the Cassianii to come out, everyone, as a rule, looked the other way. Even her, she supposed. No matter how smooth-tongued he was or how many drinks he offered her or if he wanted her to call him Bae, the fact remained (she was now well aware) that their fathers were planning, or at least thinking about, arranging a marriage. The consul’s son and the praetor’s daughter: eminently suitable, powerful, practical. And yet, the thought was not one for pleasure in the least.

Still more, she was well aware that she had just spent all her denarii, so to speak, on cadging her father to buy the slaves. If this had caused them any loss of prestige, any suspicion of their loyalty, it was likely to be incumbent on her to make up for it, and hence marry Baelius. Regina was not likely to be of much use; her step-grandmother had constantly clashed with her parents about the best way to raise her, then finally retreated with the poisonous agreement that doubtless they knew best. Furthermore, Regina and Gaius Flavius, _Aurum,_ were rumored to have a past of their own. It remained to be seen whether she would want that power within her reach, or as far away from her as possible. But Regina had inexplicably taken her side in buying the slaves, had been watching one the way Emma had watched the other. . .

She was not able to feel comfortable the rest of the night, off her footing and unsure what was going to happen to her, as if her fate was being decided by two powerful men far out of her control. She’d never thought to hope for much else; Roman society was a monument to man, to the proper order of things, to the emperor and the gods and the army, from the senator and praetor in the forum to the slave and gladiator in the arena. The woman was veiled, in the household, out of sight, unspoken of; a scant century or two ago, she would have been called only by her father’s name, not even given the courtesy of her own. But if there was anything at all she had learned from Regina, it was that a woman could still fight to carve out a place, to strike back and state that this was who she was, and be prepared to face unending scorn and censure for doing so. And slowly, without noticing, Emma herself had started to want it.

 _This goes nowhere,_ she reminded herself. She could not defy her father and the Cassianii and perhaps even the emperor himself without destroying everything around them. She had her duty to think of. She had to save her family, save them all.

Didn’t she?

\---------------

David was gone on his usual business before dawn the next morning, leaving the household more or less in peace, and Emma went down to the gardens, where she often enjoyed walking or spending time to clear her head. She wondered how long she should play along with her parents’ pretext that she was unaware of their plans, if she should try to recruit Regina as an ally, or if she should overlook her instincts and simply trust Gaius Baelius would prove to be, if not an outstandingly meritorious, at least moderately suitable husband for her. But she’d always had a sense of people, an ability to judge whether or not they were lying – or thought she had, at any rate. She no longer felt certain of anything, as if the world had changed and shifted from beneath her feet at the moment she had opened her mouth and demanded the men’s freedom.

She sank down on a bench among the flowering bushes, pulling her woolen stola close against the morning chill. On the hill below her, the city was wakening to life, and she felt a sudden sharp dissatisfaction with the strictly limited borders of her world, the narrow horizons. If she could have pulled it apart brick by brick, she would have. She did not want to be the dutiful daughter, the veiled wife. Had no idea how to start, much less carry through, but –

_“Ave.”_

Emma, having had no idea that anyone else was present in the gardens with her, jolted and started to her feet, whirling around. What she laid eyes on was nothing to soothe her racing heartbeat. Standing under the olive and fig trees, so quietly that he could have been there for the gods knew how long without her knowing, was none other than the Hibernian slave – or slave no more, she supposed – Killian. Deprived of the right to wear a toga, to which only Roman male citizens had claim, he was clad in a white loincloth, a leather-and-bronze _manica_ on his right arm, and cross-gartered sandals, lean and sun-brown and carved of weathered muscle, dark-furred chest and tousled black hair and burning blue eyes. But what was he _doing?_ Did he _have_ a death wish? Coming on her alone like this – no barbarian could be trusted, was barely above the level of a beast, and if he tried –

“What are you doing here?” she stammered.

He smiled. “Praying.” His Latin was still rough and oddly accented, but perfectly understandable; she had a sense he learned quickly. “Even slaves are still men.”

“Aye, but _here –_ ” Emma glanced around again. “If someone saw you – this is the family’s private quarters, you aren’t – ”

Killian raised one dark eyebrow. Then he reached up, plucked a fig, and calmly ate it in two bites before her stunned gaze. “You saw that, my lady,” he remarked. “Summon the centurions.”

Emma opened her mouth, then shut it. He shrugged, then nipped off an olive.

“No!” She took a step forward. “Who do you pray to, anyway? The god of madmen?”

“The god of the sea.” He held up a crude wooden figure. “Manannán mac Lir. To the Tuatha Dé, to the goddess Danu. To all the folk of my people.”

Emma hesitated, unsure what to say. Imperial religious policy was fairly tolerant; as long as citizens made sacrifices to the emperor and to _Roma_ and paid their taxes, no one cared whatever other gods they offered worship to. She had a feeling, however, that Killian did no such thing. _Then again, he is no citizen._ Just a man very far from home, a sword, a slave, meant to die in the great spectacle of the gladiatorial games, saved only by her inconvenient interference. As she stood there, she had the oddest feeling that he was reading her like the pages of an open scroll, as if nothing about what she thought or felt was secret from him. She had to put up walls, reestablish their distance somehow, but she could not think how. “I don’t – ”

“Where are my manners?” He tucked the figurine away. “We haven’t been properly introduced. Killian mac Dáithí, at your service. And you would  be Emma Julia Aurelia, the praetor’s daughter. Who bought me free. So, then. I’ve come to hear your price.”

“Price?” She should have taken a step away, two, three, should have turned and fled the garden at that very moment, but instead she stayed, and so her fate was sealed. “What makes you think you could afford it?”

He stared at her, evidently caught completely off guard for a moment, then grinned. It was a slow, considered, genuinely open smile, one that went on far longer than was considered proper and decorous for a _nobleman_ to smile at any woman he was not husband or father to, far less a slave. It made heat rush to Emma’s cheeks – and to other, unexpected places. This was far too dangerous, and he had been far too familiar. Now, _now_ she had to tell him to leave if he wanted to keep his head, but she still couldn’t get the words out.

“Brave lass,” he said approvingly, glancing her up and down. “Spirited. So then. I don’t owe my life to anyone, man or woman. Tell me what you think it’s worth, and I’ll pay.”

“You – you’re a slave.” Emma clenched her fists. “You have nothing.”

“Aye,” he said. “Almost nothing.” And grinned again.

She felt as if she’d turned molten, plunged into the mountain of fire that had erased Pompeii and Herculaneum almost fifty years ago, as it suddenly struck her what he was insinuating. By all rights she should have slapped him then and there, but her feet were still moving her closer, until they stood no more than a furlong apart in the cool shadows of the orchard, the morning sun splintering brilliant through the trunks. Until she could smell the husky, earthy scent of him; he looked remarkably clean for a slave forbidden access to the public baths of the city. Or _was_ he a freedman now? Not wanting to remind her father, she’d not asked him about the slaves, whether they’d been freed or merely taken into household service. David had said he did not trust them to guard him, but clearly he’d kept them close enough that one of them could find himself here in the family’s private gardens. Or perhaps –

“Come now, my lady.” Killian’s smirk turned crooked, dark, devilish. “I doubt we have all day.”

“I – no.” Emma took another step back. “If we were seen – both of us, we’d – ”

“Well then,” he murmured, their faces close enough by now that she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek. “We just won’t be seen, will we?”

She looked up into his face, his eyes dancing with mockery, clearly expecting that she wouldn’t dare to do it, that she’d have a mind for propriety and decency and modesty, everything that a well-born Roman woman should be. That she would not actually touch him, a man so far beneath her as to be the dust beneath her dainty slippers; she was a woman who could command his death with a flick of her finger, an ill-spoken word. He must be mad after all to be making this wager, or simply a man who thought that his life was worth very little and he cared not whether it was taken from him. After being freed from the arena, perhaps he thought he was living on borrowed time and intended to go out in a blaze of glory – seducing the praetor’s daughter beneath their very noses, force his enemies to acknowledge his existence as a man even if only to take it from him. As they had already taken his wife, his home, his freedom. Small wonder he thought he had nothing left to lose.

And yet.

He knew nothing about who he had chosen to challenge.

Emma stepped forward, put her hands on his broad shoulders, closed her eyes, and kissed him.

She had never kissed a man before, and for a brief instant, everything felt strange and unnatural – the sensation of his mouth on hers, the scratching of his unshaven stubble against her cheek, the taste of salt, the heat of him, the solidness, the closeness. But then he inhaled sharply through his nose – he clearly had never, not in a thousand years, expected her to do it – and his hand came up as if to cradle her head, tangle in her unbound hair, press her closer. Then she was moving in as well, opening her lips, a wetness and a deepness and a scrape of teeth, as his tongue took her in a way she had never known a tongue was meant to, she heard him emit a deep grunt, as she curved into the angle of his body, as his hand traced the line of her spine through the fine cloth of her chiton, as they turned their heads and stole a breath from wet parted lips and then kissed again, harder, _harder,_ until the word seemed barely sufficient to encompass it, until she was tangled and wedged against him, nearly between his legs, and realizing in mortified astonishment that the loincloth hid very few pertinent features of the male anatomy (she’d seen naked slaves before, she knew, but not like _this –_ ) and not wanting to stop, still not wanting to stop, though her head was thrown back and his hot mouth was starting to work from hers to her cheek, to the underside of her jaw, down the column of her neck. Her hands cradled his head, she could hear the noises they were making – downright _carnal,_ beyond all bounds or expectations of decency and decorum. But she couldn’t – she couldn’t – she –

 _Had_ to put a stop to this, and immediately, before she threw herself away. It felt like cutting herself in half, but she did. She jerked back and heaved a breath as if she had just been saved from drowning, hauled out of a storm at sea. Their foreheads were still resting together, their noses brushing. “Enough,” she croaked. _“Enough.”_

He stared at her with eyes gone blank with shock, as if unable to believe that she had called his bluff so resoundingly. Then he pushed away, almost violently, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “My lady,” he said. “My lady, I should. . .”

Emma watched him, trying to recover herself. “Is the debt settled?”

“More than.” He smiled again, so sadly that it hurt her. “I’ll keep and cherish that until they come for me. Which I suppose they must.”

That jolted her. “Why?”

Killian’s unsettlingly blue gaze held hers, unblinking. “You’re going to tell them.”

“Shall I?” She lifted her chin, staring back. Gods, how she wanted nothing more than to kiss him again. To run her fingers over the white scar on his cheek, to ask him about Hibernia, to taste the freedom she had been so sorely lacking, to defy everyone who thought to control her and contain her, to blow unleashed like the wind and the wrath and the Furies. But if she did, she would never stop, and she had sense enough to know what an impossible dream it was. “Wouldn’t you like to know who I am?”

His intent expression never wavered. “Perhaps I would.”

Emma turned away. It was late enough by now that she’d have been missed up at the house, and the last thing, the  _last_ thing, she needed was for them was to come looking for her and keeping consort in the company of a slave, of _this_ slave. She didn’t answer him, instead keeping her head down and climbing the terraced steps back toward the villa, sharply aware of her heart pounding beneath her breastbone, the weakness in her knees, the sweatiness of her palms, and above all, the thought forcing its way into her head and refusing to be denied:

She knew exactly why she had saved him.


	3. Chapter 3

Emma had been expecting the summons for almost a week by the time it finally came. Had woken every morning and slept every night in a dull dreadful anticipation, by the time a slave was sent to fetch her down to her father’s solarium, where her parents and Regina and a man she did not know, a servant but a highly ranking one, awaited her in solemn array. Her father cleared his throat twice before he seemed able to speak. “Emma, my love. Sit.”

Emma sank onto a chaise, her limbs feeling numb and wooden. “To what do I owe the honor of this audience?”

Regina snorted loudly. Emma’s eyes flashed to her, but her step-grandmother remained as magnificently imperturbable as ever, staring up at the roof with its panes of leaded glass to admit the streaming sunlight. It was her mother who answered. “My dear, you should be very happy. We have made a splendid match for you.”

Somehow, Emma managed to contort her features into a passable representation of surprise. “Have you?”

“Aye. Gaius Flavius Cassianus, the consul – he has offered his only son, Gaius Baelius, and your father has done us the joy of accepting.” Maria Margareta Aurelia beamed at her daughter. “It’s more than we dreamed of, even. I know that the both of you will be very happy together.”

“I. . .” Emma’s lips had gone stiff. She was the only child her parents had ever been blessed with, and as such, with no male child to carry on the family name – an almost unconscionable dishonor in patriarchal Rome – it was doubly important to her to marry well and birth sons who might adopt it as an honor. It could not be her. A woman’s honor was her shame, her demure propriety, to manage the household and the family and all private matters as the husband did in public. Marry Baelius, and all the dreams she’d ever had of leaving Rome, of seeing what lay beyond the hazy blue horizon, were gone. She’d be shut in gaol, in a prison to bound her from all sides, until she almost imagined that she could see it pressing down on her. It was hard to breathe, and in that moment of shock, she could think of only one thing to say, to blurt out, no matter how impolitic. “You. . . you married for love.”

David and Maria Margareta exchanged a surprised, troubled glance. It was true that they, most uncommonly, had been a love match – that he, born to a middle-class plebeian family, had dared quite far above his station in seeking the hand of an aristocrat, and that he among few had earned his present appointment through talent, not nepotism. Emma had always had that in the back of her mind, had thought that they’d never coerce her into anything outstandingly against her will, but she had been a fool to think so. Was this not all the proof needed? It was true that she was nineteen, much older than the age at which highborn girls were usually matched off, and that daughters of prominent families had very little say in the choosing of their husbands, but –

It was her mother who finally spoke. “You will learn to love Baelius, sweetheart. You owe it to yourself, and he deserves no less.”

 _“Deserves?”_ It burst from Emma’s lips; she could not quite withhold it. “I don’t even know him – _you_ don’t even know him! All those stories about how he’s – ”

The mysterious man in the corner shifted and cleared his throat. “I am quite certain,” he said mildly, “that the _filia_ Aurelia did not mean to offer any insult to my honored patron.”

“Of course not, of course not.” David held up a hand. “She is young, that’s all. You understand that we have no intention of refusing the Cassianii.”

 _No one can refuse the Cassianii._ Emma heard and understood quite well. Perhaps her mother was right, perhaps she was unable to know her own feelings. Perhaps this was the choice, the only choice. “I. . . consent,” she said, sounding most unlike herself, strange and small. “I would be delighted to marry Gaius Baelius.”

“As I thought.” The Cassianus agent smiled. “A wise decision.”

“When?”

“When the astrologers and oracles have consulted the stars and made an augury, and when the fates deem it auspicious.” It was David who answered. “We will pay for a sacrifice at the temple of Jupiter. There are the _Ludi Romani_ upcoming, so perhaps after – ”

“Of course,” Emma murmured, barely listening. The _Ludi Romani,_ the Roman Games, the oldest and most prestigious of all, a full fortnight of chariot races, gladiatorial combats, athletic competitions, mock hunts, theatrical performances, and more. As the _praetor urbanus,_ her father would be run off his feet arranging and administrating them, and thence would be in no mind or have any spare time, far less money, to stage an event of the grandiose scale and stature required for his only daughter’s marriage. So she still had some time, a little. Whatever to do with it, or if she should do something with it, was a terrifying and nebulous possibility.

Maria Margareta smiled at her. “It is a lovely day, my dear. Perhaps you should take some air?”

“I. . . yes.” Emma had a sudden idea, and seized on it. “May I have leave to go down to the market? Perhaps I could choose something for the wedding.”

“I don’t see the harm,” David said generously, clearly eager to appease her. “Take Regina with you, you should have a companion or – ”

“Leave me out of this,” Regina cut in. “Marry your daughter to whatever fool you care to, Aurelius, but don’t ask me to make mock as if I approve. _Panem et circenses.”_ And with that, and a withering smile and flash of her dark eyes, she swept out of the room.

“Still.” Maria Margareta looked concerned. “You require a chaperone, perhaps I should find – ”

“No.” It was ill-mannered to interrupt, but at the moment, Emma barely cared. “I’ll manage it. Mother, Father. Good health.”

And with that, she ran.

\------------

Shortly thereafter, Emma had gone out, ordered her _lectica_ prepared, and was doing her best at feigning nonchalance as she looked for two strong men to carry it; a litter with silken curtains, accompanied by two guards and two female slaves, was the only fit way for her to leave the house. She hated it with a passion just then, would have walked down the hill alone in sensible sandals and a toga, but the only women who wore the toga were whores. _A man’s honor, a woman’s shame._ This had been a foolish idea. She shouldn’t have –

“ _Ave,”_ a familiar voice drawled behind her. “We’ll do it.”

Emma whirled around. Sure enough, it was them. Both of them – Killian and Robin, sweating and glistening and shirtless, appeared as if by sorcery, as if she hadn’t been looking for them (one of them, at least) all along. They nodded to her in unison, then knelt, and she had no choice but to step into the _lectica,_ draw the gauzy curtain, and lean back as they hoisted her effortlessly to their shoulders.  The gates of the villa swung open, and they proceeded in more or less order down the hill toward the market.

Emma had always been fascinated by the Forum Magnum – surrounded by the towering white-columned edifices of Roman power, overlooked by the statues of great men, the beating heart of the Empire that reaped all the fruits of its trade. If something could not be found there, it was liable not to exist. Ivory and bronze and brass and goldwork from Africa, indigo and salt and pearls and lime, spices and sandalwood and incense and gems and fine cloth from the Silk Road, amphorae of _garum_ and wine and oil from Gaul, ink and papyri and scrolls supposedly copied or stolen from the great library of Egypt burned by Caesar, fruits and nuts and figs and dates from the vineyards, roasted meat spitted savory on braziers, the clamor of half a hundred tongues, crammed stalls, the flash of denarii and sestertii and other coins, the click of abacuses as merchants worked out tallage, exotic animals in cages, scribes shut up in booths where commoners came to dictate wills or contract of marriage or business agreements or other legal papers, imperial customs collectors making perpetual nuisances of themselves, soldiers loitering on corners, orators making speeches, and a constant flow of patrons to and from _taverna_ and foodsellers, prominent men filtering into the public baths with their sons, drunks being dunked in fountains, beggars inveigling for coins, poor women siphoning off water for their families from the aqueducts, disorder and filth and delight every direction Emma could look. Nothing like her ordered, tidy, cloistered, closed existence. She loved it so much it almost hurt.

They bumped among the stalls for a bit, looking for nothing in particular, until a particular merchant beckoned to them. “Would the lady see some jewelry?” He flashed a handful of necklaces, bracelets, rings. “Would the lady?”

Emma gestured to Killian and Robin to lower her down, and accepted a hand from Robin to step out of the _lectica_ to the street. “What’s this?” she asked, fingering a small silver ring, set with a winking green jewel. It drew her, for some reason. Whatever he said it was worth, she’d offer half.

“That, mistress. That is very special. It was spelled by a druid in far Hibernia, and true love follows it wherever it goes. Is the lady wed? Purchase it, and it will be nothing but bliss and felicity for you, and your husband.” He winked.

Emma felt her face heating. She did not dare to look around for the source of the snort she’d just heard, though one of the guards cleared his throat and loudly loosened his shortsword in the scabbard. She held up a hand, telling him that it was no matter, and glanced back to the merchant. “How much?”

“For you, mistress, a bargain. Two denarii.”

Emma raised an eyebrow. Clearly he had no idea that he was bargaining with a praetor’s daughter who had learned to read by perusing her father’s records, who knew the value of trade and currency. “Are you out of your mind? It’s not worth more than a few sestertii.” She tossed it disdainfully back onto the pile. “Clearly I cannot do business with you. We’re done here.”

“One and a half, mistress. Because you are so beautiful. One and a half.”

“No. Ridiculous.” Emma gestured to the slaves. Robin stepped forward to offer her a hand.

“Did I say one and a half?” The merchant smiled winningly. “Nonsense. Nonsense, clearly. One, just one. Here, look. Look how fair it would be.” He picked it up and advanced forward, bowed low, and took hold of her hand, sliding the cool silver circlet over her fourth finger. “There is no other woman who could wear it as well as – ”

But whatever else he was going to say, Emma never found out. At that very moment, a huge, heavy, iron-wheeled chariot, pulled by four great horses, thundered through the square, knocking over the merchant’s booth, sending the wares flying, throwing Emma backwards, and causing an outbreak of angry cursing at whatever arrogant popinjay was driving so recklessly through the crowded market. Everything was a blur; she had ended up on one knee without remembering how she got there, her chiton torn and stained, and then someone caught her and pulled her up against him. “Are you all right?” he said in her ear, low and urgently. “Are you?”

“I – ” Emma put out a hand confusedly and pressed it against the hard muscle of Killian’s chest. “I am. What was he _thinking?”_

“Clearly he wasn’t.” Killian hadn’t quite let go of her, and she was still clinging close to him, closer than she knew she should, hearing his heart hammering beneath her ear – but he hadn’t been nearby, he hadn’t been clipped and knocked off his feet as she had. She didn’t understand. “There are laws against that sort of thing, no?”

“Aye.” Emma blew out a breath. “I’ll be having a word with my father. Let’s go.”

As she started to move off, she realized that she still had the ring on her finger. The merchant, looking quite stunned, was in no state to demand its retrieval; he was staring around at his broken and scattered goods with a heartsick look on his face. Emma dug in her purse and tossed him three denarii. “There. For your trouble.”

“Thank you, mistress,” he stammered, clutching the coins. “Thank you.”

Emma nodded again, then allowed Killian to help her back up into the _lectica._ Its curtains had been splattered by the mud kicked up, and she herself did not feel nearly as steady as she pretended. To open the day with her betrothal to Baelius, and to end it like this. . . no. She closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose, trying to shut it out. Wanted to make it go away. Wanted to make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

\-------------

She could not sleep that night. It had been difficult enough to explain away her bedraggled state as an accidental mishap in the marketplace, which was the truth but somehow still sounded like a lie, and she had had no appetite to join in the evening meal. She did not want to smile at her parents and pretend she was pleased, did not want to hear her mother’s well-meant reassurances about Baelius, wanted in fact to shut them out and stay behind a wall. Finally, after an hour spent tossing and turning on her bed, she got up, pulled on a light linen drape, and went out.

It was August in Rome, and the sweltering heat lay thick on the city, queer and shimmering even by night. The trade winds had been dormant instead of blowing it down the Tiber out to sea, and everything seemed poised on the brink, desperate to gulp a breath, to fly or fall. Pinpricks of light, of torches, of the red-lit doors of brothels, of feasts held late into the night at other villas, glittered across the hills, shining like earthbound stars. All the freedom she could only see, could not touch. It was downright maddening.

Emma sat down on a stone bench, bare feet pressed against the cool mosaic of the veranda. Her loosened hair was stuck to her sweaty neck, and she scraped it off, plaiting it into a ragged rope down her back. She had to think of something. Either accept her parents’ plan for her to marry Baelius, or –

Or –

There was no other option. Nothing. _Nobody refuses the Cassianii._ They were too powerful, and she was just a girl. All the deck was stacked against her, and she glanced down, twisting the ring on her finger. The green stone glittered in the reflected moonlight. Useless. She should have given it back to the merchant, doubtless he could have swindled someone else into –

“My lady. Good evening.”

Every time, every place, he still managed to surprise her. Was standing there in the shadows as if half a dream, as if she’d conjured him up simply by wanting, or as if he’d somehow known she’d be here, the way he had met her in the gardens before. He looked even more heart-stopping in the silvery glow, as if he himself was a fey creature or something not quite human. Was wearing only his loincloth, barefoot, bareheaded, leaning on an ivy-crawling pillar. “We seem to be seeing a great deal of each other.”

“Are you _following_ me?” Emma stood up, conscious of the fact that this could be taken in more than one sense: her drape was thin, silhouetting the slender lines of her body against the low-hanging moon, and his gaze was so intent that it made it feel as if it was nothing. One meeting, finding her conveniently alone, could possibly be dismissed as coincidence, but a second. . .

Killian mac Dáithí merely shrugged. She had never met a slave, or a man, like him, so utterly self-possessed, so utterly without shame or fear or respect or decency. He carried himself like a born prince, spoke as if he had been educated at the feet of the greatest statesmen, did not seem to think there was anything strange in him, a barbarian, being near her, setting his sights on her, _pursuing_ her (if that was what he was doing, and which gave her the strangest sensation of all). And so, instead of begging her pardon, he grinned. His teeth were very white; she had rarely seen such. “What would you do if I was?”

“I don’t know.” The admission was startled out of her, surprising them both with its honesty. “That . . . that kiss, it was one time. I’m to be wed. If there’s any suspicion of infidelity. . .” It was the one thing that could destroy a young woman’s reputation faster than anything, render her permanently unmarriageable. She might remarry after a first marriage, after death or divorce of her first husband, but not in the first place, not if she was not known beyond all doubt to be chaste. That was why highborn girls married so young, generally.

“I should not wish to destroy your future.” Killian raised an eyebrow. “Though it seems a fragile thing, if a bloody _slave_ has that much power.”

 Emma blinked; she had not missed the absolute venom in his voice as he spat the word. “I thought my father freed you,” she said weakly.

“He didn’t.”

“He should have.” Despite herself, despite everything, she was already moving closer. Could not help it, as if there was some sort of irresistible force drawing them together. Her fingers itched to touch him again, and she had to clench them hard. “I’ll tell him to.”

“What?” Killian barked a laugh. “And remind him of your disobedience? I doubt it.”

“Do you?” There was not much space remaining between them. She could reach out and brush him with her fingers, but if she did, she was lost. The tension strung the air between them like a lyre-string tuned too tight, perilous close to snapping. Her chest was thick, her throat choked. _Nobody’s watching,_ a seductive and horrifyingly dangerous little voice whispered to her. _Nobody would see._ But if she was wrong, it was death for both of them. For him, at least. For her, exile, dishonor, the wrath of the Cassianii, her father losing his position, and worse. Death at least would be swift and final. Her punishment would be much longer. _Foolish girl. Go._

She didn’t.

Killian smiled at her, almost fondly. “You remind me of a bird,” he said. “In a cage. Or a swan, perhaps. Fierce and beautiful and proud, who should spread her wings and fly. You could, you know. Leave Rome and never look back.”

“Leave?” Despite everything, she’d never thought of that. Everything she’d ever known was here. “And go where?”

He shrugged again. “There’s an entire empire to choose from, is there not?”

Emma took a deep, unsteady breath. He could not tempt her like this. “I – no. You should go.”

“If the lady insists.” He made a deep, excessively flourishing bow. But didn’t quite move.

They stared at each other for a fraught, terrible moment. His throat visibly moved as he swallowed. She thought she could see the air vibrating around him with his effort to hold himself still. She was turning, or she would. She’d take that step, that first step, eventually, and then it would be easier, she’d do it somehow, she had to, even if there was a voice inside her screaming otherwise, screaming _no,_ but she’d walk away and leave him, she’d do it somehow. She –

– didn’t know what she was doing, didn’t _know,_ this was madness, _madness,_ but it was also freedom, freedom at last, as she closed the last space between them, jerked him against her, cradled his head in her hands, and finally breathed home.

Killian grunted in shock. But only for an instant, and then he crushed her head to his, the other arm, wrapping around her back, pressing against her at full length, enveloping her. She was off balance, could only cling to him harder, lips yielding to his, his tongue taking her as it had before. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t possible, heavy breathing through their noses, separating briefly and then crashing back together, mouths wide open, craving and clawing. She had never tasted anything as good as him, as he began to work on her jaw and throat, nipping at the shell of her ear, grinding against her, an unfamiliar hot wet ache building between her legs as she rubbed back on him like a cat. She was molten and malleable in his hands, soft as butter, whereas he was very decidedly not. She needed the friction to build, needed the deep rhythm, her body knowing what to do even if her mind had not quite caught up. Madness. Madness and glory.

Killian’s hand slid up the line of her torso, delicately cupping the curve of her breast, thumb ghosting over the nipple and turning it to a stiff peak. She hissed and pressed closer, and he circled it, the heat of his skin burning through the flimsy cloth. His other hand rested low on her back, fingers spread, slowly tracing the knobs of her spine, up to her shoulder where she’d pinned the drape with a bronze brooch; if he loosened it, it would fall off her at once. All the while they kept kissing, frenzied and indiscriminate, her hands tangled in his black hair, tasting the salt on his skin. He was hard and solid as a block of granite, towering, impossible.

Emma let out a breathy moan, desperate for the hand now moving around her stomach to travel lower. She needed him there, needed the pressure, could feel how wet she was, slippery and roused and sensitive, and snatched his wrist, trying to force it further down. But he seemed to be resisting, holding himself back even if it was killing him. It clearly was not due to not wanting it; his face was sheened with sweat. Yet if so, why –

“No,” he muttered, eyes half-rolled back in his head. “On your wedding night, if they thought – ”

It hit Emma, just then, that he was afraid of leaving undeniable proof of his attentions. If she did not bleed on the sheets, if it was not proven beyond a doubt that she was a virgin – that was when rumors began, that was when danger and gossip were brewed. But at the moment, she was beyond caring. “Please,” she whispered shakily. “I want you to.”

Killian hesitated, then slid his fingers down her stomach, pulling the cloth away, and touched her lightly between the legs, moving with slow and deliberate circles. He caught her nub with his thumb, sending waves of lightheaded pleasure shuddering through her, and traced a finger across her entrance, teasing the slickness. He kneaded her slowly and deliberately, opening her, and slid in only to the first knuckle, stimulating her until she saw white. She would have done anything to make him move deeper, but he wouldn’t, playing her without penetrating her, until she gasped and bucked hard against him. “Killian,” she pleaded. _“Killian.”_

He glanced down at her with the eclipse of a devilish smile. “Aye, sweetheart?”

“I – ” Emma did not know, not really, what she was even asking for. Her education in this subject had been, to say the least, limited. She had had to resort to a friend, married a few years past, to supply the basic details, but even that had come nowhere close to what Killian was doing to her now. She had not even imagined that such things were possible, that man and woman were meant to meet like this. All she knew was that she needed more. “I want you.”

The look on his face turned sad, almost distant. In that moment, she could hear what she had just asked, that she had all but asked him to risk his own death warrant and her utter dishonor. Then, slowly, a smile took its place, as if he had heard and understood the challenge and quite welcomed the chance to show, once and for all, that he feared nothing his slave-masters could do to him. He knelt in front of her, running his hands slowly down the backs of her thighs, then leaned in, dark stubble scratching against the soft skin on the inside of her hip, in the cut between leg and stomach. He glanced up at her, blue eyes intent and questioning, as if waiting for her to push him away. When she didn’t, he slowly, carefully, steadily slid his tongue into her.

Emma almost fainted. She clutched handfuls of his thick hair, her knees turning to water, as he explored her hot sweetness with tenderness and thoroughness and care, moving delicately, tasting her. His breath misted hot against her secret skin, both of them flushed and dripping, a salty rasp and rhythm as he continued to fuck her (there was no other word, no word so vulgar and carnal and complete) with his tongue. Yet it still wasn’t deep enough, not hard enough, not enough. To hell with Gaius Baelius, to hell with all of them, she wanted –

The thought, however, was caught away in a gust of brightness, of something catching her up and shoving her, shoving her higher and harder and hotter and tumbling over the edge into infinity, as her head threw back and her chest heaved and she couldn’t steal a breath, couldn’t see anything except light, giving into the pleasure sparkling and snarling through her like a lightning strike, until it finally subsided and Killian rocked back on his heels, panting,  trails of sweat gleaming on his shoulders and chest. He wiped his mouth and said, in a deep hoarse croak more heavily flavored than usual with his Gaelic lilt, “That’s enough now, my lady. Go. _Go.”_

Emma was still sorting out which of her limbs belonged to her and in fact what her name might be, and thus did not immediately move. Then she stepped back, her entire body feeling heavy and dreamy and not entirely real, coursing on the afterglow. Sense was belatedly returning. She had been as reckless as it was possible to be. He was right. He was. And yet. . . “I – ”

“Go.” His shoulders were tense, rock-hard. “I need to. . . attend a few things. Privately.”

She did not want to. Not when every pore, every fiber, every sinew ached for completion, for consummation. For finishing what they had begun. For coming together as closely as they possibly could. But she must wake up and realize that she was still engaged to Baelius, that Killian was still a slave, that nothing could and would ever change about what they were to each other, and this must not be love, the exalted passion, but lust, the coarsest sin. Yet this was the second time she had forced herself to walk away from him after being drawn too dangerously close to the sun, and her wax wings were melting. She was tumbling. Falling, falling, _falling,_ from the stars and into the depthless abyss of the sea.

She readjusted her fallen drape, pinned it back into place. Turned. Still flushed and trembling, she hurried across the veranda toward the shadows of the corridor. Did not dare look back. Did not dare even voice what she knew in her heart of hearts was true.

They were both completely and beyond all measure done for.


	4. Chapter 4

Torches and braziers lined the promenade, casting color and light in all directions, echoed a thousandfold by the temples across the city, a merry cascade of revelers making offering at one and then another, their hoots and hollering and laughter drifting on the wind; they’d be at it all night and then some. It was the nineteenth of Augustus, the feast of _Vinalia Rustica;_ a harvest celebration sacred to Jupiter and Venus, to prepare to gather and press the grapes ripening all summer in the terraces and vineyards and turn them into wine. It was, therefore, a most auspicious night to hold a betrothal celebration, as marriage likewise embodied the promise of harvest and fertility and children, and at no less than the imperial palace. Gaius Flavius Cassianus, it appeared, might have cashed in that favor that Hadrian owed him.

Emma had never actually been inside the palace, though her father was often there for his work, and she could not stop looking around. Silk-curtained alcoves, reflecting pools, statues on plinths, gold and ivory and marble, halls where footsteps echoed, and the most extravagant court paid to her: legates and senators and proconsuls and praetors and their wives, admitted out in public for this most special occasion, ceaselessly congratulating her on her impending nuptials. It made her feel like a rat in a trap. Everyone in Rome now knew that she was supposed to marry Baelius after the _Ludi Romani_ were over,and she could not shake the feeling that they also knew of her indiscretion with Killian in the gardens that one night. She had grimly avoided seeing him ever since, even if it felt like strangling herself, due to being quite certain that if she allowed that to happen for a third time, she was not strong enough to put a stop to it again. And she at least, no matter how much she had less than no desire to wed, had more pride than that. _A slave._

Which she would soon be, it felt. Apart from when he was accepting well-wishes, Baelius was off partaking in the celebratory libations with his friends; if she needed him for anything, she was the one who had to go find him, and he would always roll his eyes and make some comment for the benefit of his entourage about _women,_ at which they would all obligingly guffaw. Then when they were together, he did not appear to be listening to a word she said, or would make some casual remark to suggest that while it was laudable for her to have opinions, she should restrain them for a more appropriate venue – which was apparently anywhere he did not have to hear them. Emma had never felt more like an object of furniture than she did at his side, something that he had acquired for status and prestige and would remain exactly where he put it. At least Baelius lacked the malice of his father, as he did not appear to be treating her thusly out of spite but rather a simple and oblivious belief that this was the way things were. Still, that was no foundation for a marriage, or even friendship. When Emma weighed up the prospect of spending years and years with him, a future remarkable for nothing but its imprisonment, all she could hope was that he would die first. Then she might still salvage something from her life.

These were deeply melancholy thoughts for what was supposed to be a joyously happy night, and it was what decided her that she needed a drink. As it was _Vinalia,_ it was one of the few occasions on which women were permitted to do so without scorn. Attitudes had relaxed from the days when husbands were allowed to legally murder their wives if they caught them imbibing, but drunkenness, carrying the suspicion of improper behavior and sexual liberty, remained a vice a thousand times more sinister in women than in men. The satirists wrote of it, made mock of it; it was a staple in low comedies, how they could not be trusted with the fruit of the vine. Emma did not care. She accepted a cup poured from the new harvest, drank it down, then unobtrusively drifted to the other side of the hall and took another.

At the crux of the night, Baelius ceremonially presented her with an iron ring, which would be changed for a gold one at their wedding. Emma accepted it, doing her best to look as if this was the fulfillment of her dreams, and hoped she would now be at peace to be carried home and crawl into bed, but it was not to be. After they stepped down from the dais and had a moment almost to themselves in the crowd, Baelius asked, “Aren’t you going to put it on your finger?”

Startled, she glanced down at her hand, where she still wore the green-stoned ring. She closed it into a fist reflexively, but it was too late; he’d noticed. “It’s. . . just a bauble,” she said, with an attempt at a winning smile. “I thought I’d make yours into a pendant. Wear it around my neck, keep it closer to my heart. I don’t need it on my finger.”

He grinned. “Well, I don’t _need_ to tell my father that you care more for some worthless trinket than the ring he had specially made, but. . .”

Emma flinched. Then she gritted her teeth and wrenched the ring off, scraping over her knuckle. She tucked it in the pouch at her waist and slid on the iron one instead; it felt heavy, cold, unfamiliar, almost like a shackle. Then she inclined her head, turned her back, and moved off to find her parents. David would be staying even later, but Maria Margareta and the other wives were now expected to take their decorous leave, and Emma was not at all sad to join them. She climbed into the litter and drew the curtains, wanting nothing more than to put the palace behind her and not look back. Her lips were set and grim, and she realized that she was holding them so tightly for fear that she was about to crack and burst into tears. _How do I marry him? How do I do it?_ Join the crowds making offerings to Venus, and hope that the goddess of love would smile down on her, have mercy, somehow turn this into a happy union? Nothing on earth felt capable of doing that, and Emma felt another surge of rage at the merchant. _You promised me that ring would bring true love, bliss and felicity. Baelius is right. Cheap, worthless trinket._ She should just throw it out into the streets, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

It was slow going through the crowded streets, even the short distance from the palace to the Aurelius villa, and the guards had to chase off drunken stragglers on multiple occasions. By the time she was finally helped down in the courtyard, Emma could feel the burn and buzz of the wine in the back of her head, wanted more of it, wanted a potion to help her forget. But even when she reached her quiet, dark, cool quarters and was preparing to undress and fall facefirst into her bed, she was not to be at leisure to do that. She had barely reached for the pin of her drape when a voice in the doorway said, “Mistress?”

Annoyed at being interrupted yet again, Emma spun around. “Aye?” she snapped.

The servant bobbed a nervous obeisance. “I crave your pardons, mistress. But the lady Regina left instruction that as soon as you returned home, I was to fetch you to her chambers for an audience. If you will, then? My lady?”

 _An audience with Regina?_ Emma was surprised, unsettled, and dismayed all at once. She hadn’t expected her step-grandmother to summon her so autocratically, and couldn’t think what she could possibly want. Regina had refused to attend the engagement festivities, claiming she’d sooner put out her own eyes with a hot iron, suffer the fate of Sisyphus, or any other number of extravagantly mythological punishment, and Emma very much doubted that the older woman simply meant to wish her good health and send her on her way. Regina’s gifts, if this was even what it was, always came with a poisoned sting in the tail.

Nonetheless, she could think of no good reason to refuse, and hence was forced to trail the servant out, through the corridors, and across the villa to Regina’s private quarters. Warm lamplight bobbed invitingly through the silken drapes, and the sweet music of a lyre drifted on the humid night breeze. Emma ducked through and stood nervously at attention, feeling like a soldier on parade, as she waited for Regina, reclined on a luxurious couch, to take notice of her. When this did not appear forthcoming, she cleared her throat. “Grandmother?”

Regina turned, only then seeming to become aware of her. “My dear.” She economically dismissed the servant and the lyre player, then stood up, turning back to Emma with a vulpine smile. “I’m sure you had a splendid time at your festival?”

Uncertain whether to answer this honestly, Emma remained rooted to the spot. Regina, however, had not appeared to require her input. She stooped to retrieve something: a small bronze pot with gadrooned lid, such as might be used to keep kohl or paint or perfume, and passed it over. “Here. I’ve given you a wedding present.”

Certain that she was being mocked, well aware of how much Regina disdained the marriage, Emma’s spine stiffened to iron. “I don’t want it,” she snapped. “What is it, a curse?”

Regina laughed aloud. “As if anyone needed my help hexing _that_ union. And you’ll want to see what it is before you leap to conclusions. Go on, open it.”

Deeply dubious, expecting an asp or something of the like to leap out at her, Emma thumbed open the lid. She was thus greatly confused to see nothing but a few herbal pellets and crushed leaves, giving off a distinct, pungent scent. There was no reason that Emma could see why Regina would have given her a few weeds and called it a wedding present, and she once more began to suspect this of some elaborate, cruel mockery. She shut the lid and stared back at the older woman. “What is this, exactly?”

Regina’s smile widened. “Silphium,” she said. “Pennyroyal and tansy. All of which are rather effective, if properly used, at preventing a woman from bearing an unwanted child.”

“What – as if that will last me long with Baelius? I don’t think a few crumbs of – ”

Once more, Emma was interrupted by Regina’s laughter, the flash of her teeth, as she tossed back her loosened black hair and bestowed her step-granddaughter with a look of immense superciliousness that could, yet, barely contain its glee. “You think it’s for _Baelius?_ Truly? After everything you know as to my opinion on that idiot? Oh no. That’s for you.”

“But – ” It remained an enigma an instant longer, until it crashed horrifyingly into place. “I – I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t – I wouldn’t – I never have – ”

“Please.” Regina waved her stammering excuses aside. “I have an _excellent_ source. Did you really think I didn’t know about your little dalliance with the slave?”

“I. . .” Emma’s feet felt rooted to the floor. “It was only once. Nothing happened. Truly. He – he didn’t want – we didn’t –  he said I had to be still a – ”

“Noble of him.” Regina’s nostrils flared. “But do you think _I_ was still virgin when I wed your grandfather – miserable, grasping, decrepit, controlling, hateful old bastard that he was? All they need is some blood on the sheets. They needn’t ever know exactly how it got there. One good scratch after he’s fallen asleep – doubtless he’ll have a goblet or three of wine at the celebration, which will help – and there you are.” She shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

The implications of this were too incredible to process all at once. “So you want. . . you _want_ me to. . .” Emma couldn’t even get the words out. “With K – the slave? _Why?”_

“Because.” Regina raised an elegantly plucked eyebrow. “If there is one thing in the world I have sympathy with, it is a young woman being elbowed into matrimony against her will. And because if it is the last thing I do, I will ensure that neither your parents or Gaius thrice-damned Flavius has what that they want. Spoiling their perfect little marriage seems a good start.”

Emma was still entirely speechless. All she could come up with was a feeble, girlish croak. “What if he does not want – ”

“He’s a slave. Since when do his wishes enter into it?” Regina looked as if she could not believe this piece of charming but utterly provincial naïveté. “If he is not amenable, merely inform him that you will tell your father all about how he attempted to have his barbaric way with you. That should change his mind quick enough.”

“No! I won’t do it that way! I won’t – you’re willing to play this wager with our future, with both of us being caught, with my reputation ruined and him being put to death? _No!”_

“Oh, you sweet thing.” Regina gripped the back of her chaise, her knuckles going white. “Did you think I was really offering you a way to _be_ with him? True Love, or whatever fanciful notion you’ve taken into your head? If I knew how to alter the world, tear apart the very warp and weft so as to make it fitting for a noblewoman to consort with a slave – believe me, I would, and without a second thought. But I can’t. I _can,_ however, give you one sweet memory to remember him by, to ensure that that dolt Baelius is not the one to take your maiden’s gift and never will be, and that you have defied the Cassianii and the greatest men in Rome without lifting a finger. Don’t tell me you don’t want it. I know you do.”

As Emma continued to stare at her step-grandmother in shock, something else fell into place. How Regina knew all this. Who Killian must have told. Why Regina took it, no matter how much she wanted to spite the Aurelii and Gaius Flavius alike, so very personally. “Robin.”

Regina was good at feigning blankness. “Who?”

“No matter.” Emma closed her hand around the small bronze pot. It was terrifying how much she wanted it, the seductive ease with which Regina had orchestrated it all, how she truly might give in and do it. Scrambling for another excuse, she found one and seized onto it. “How would we even find time alone? It’s scarce as if he could be seen entering my rooms, and if you think I could sneak down to the slave quarters. . .”

“Of course not.” Regina scoffed. “On the first night of the Roman Games, there will be a great spectacle at the colosseum. Your father, Gaius Flavius, and your dearest betrothed will all be in attendance, and I shall arrange for your mother to receive an invitation from the wife of some prominent senator who, of course, she must pay court on. Then I will send for you. When you arrive in my quarters, you shall find the person of your interest waiting for you, having been instructed in his task. Do try to be finished by the midnight hour, as I’ll be returning then.”

Emma opened her mouth. Nothing came out except a faint squeak. She closed it.

Regina turned and swept back to the chaise. When Emma remained motionless, the older woman glanced up with one dark eyebrow sharply raised and said, “Good night.”

Emma went.

\--------------------

For the next several days, Emma’s stomach was in such a knot, her attention so scattered, her nerves so raw, that she felt certain she was about to betray them all with her face. The only solution was to build up a wall, to hide her emotions behind it, to refuse to let either of her parents in, no matter how persistently they tapped at the window. It was plain that both of them were concerned about her low spirits, when a young woman about to be married should show – if not improper and lascivious excitement – at least some semblance of happiness. They were attempting to cheer her with reassurances that this was the beginning of her life, that as Baelius’ wife she would see things and go places and have responsibilities quite beyond the sheltered existence she had led as the praetor’s only daughter, but Emma could not have cared less. One moment she was determined to reject Regina’s offer, refuse to be played as a pawn against her own mother and father and the Cassianii and even her own future. Then the next it was the only thing she wanted, the only way she could see to claw back even a scrap of what had been taken from her without her cooperation or her consent. The hunger burned in her more or less constantly, like the vestal flame tended by the virgins, the hearthfire of Rome. _I could become one of them. Renounce all worldly ties and never marry._ Nobody could blame her, at least not openly, for coming down with a sudden attack of religious piety. And yet. . . and yet. . .

By the time the appointed night arrived, Emma had decided precisely nothing. As Regina had promised, her parents were gone and would not be back until the wee hours of the morning, and the villa was almost deserted except for her; Emma had feigned a headache and a woman’s complaint to avoid accompanying her mother. She briefly, giddily considered running away, slip out one of the city gates in a cloak and dark hood and get as far as she could before the sun came up. But how far could she get, truly? A clearly well-born woman alone, beyond the walls of Rome with no idea where she was going or how to get there, would be a catastrophe.

The entire walk to Regina’s quarters, she savagely second-guessed herself. She shouldn’t go. This was a setup. She’d find Baelius there ready to spring at her from behind a curtain, aghast that she had ever thought of doubting his devotion to her. In some strange twisted part of herself, Emma almost wanted him to be, wanted him to prove that he might actually want to fight for her, to make their marriage at least bearable. If she didn’t have a choice, if this was it. . .

She came to a halt. Stared at nothing. Then raised a fist, and knocked on the door.

A moment later, it opened.

The room was cool and dark and deserted, the braziers out, the moonlight paving pale tracks on the floor through the columns. Emma looked from side to side, anxiously clutching her shawl close. She couldn’t see who had let her in. Just shadows shifting, hangings fluttering in the breeze. “Regina?” she whispered. “Anyone?”

“Lass?”

The voice came from behind her, clearly startled. She turned to discover that for the third time, she was alone and in a compromising situation with Killian mac Dáithí – who was staring back at her, clearly as lost as she was. He took a convulsive step forward. “What in Danu’s name are you doing here? This is bloody dangerous, you’re not supposed – ”

“You’re here.” Emma’s mind felt numbed, slowed, stupid. Somehow she had never thought he would be. “Did Regina send for you?”

“What?” Killian stared back at her, tense and pale-faced. “I was told that there was some sort of alarm up here, that someone had broken into the villa, that you and Lady Regina were in – ” He stopped, apparently having thought he’d revealed too much. “Evidently I was mistaken,” he said to the ceiling, trying to compose himself. “May I see you back to your rooms, mistress?”

“I.” It was slowly dawning on Emma that Killian had not, in fact, been informed that he was supposed to summarily seduce her and take her maidenhead as part of whatever demented plot was truly going on here. Instead, he’d been told that she was in danger, and he’d unthinkingly rushed to find her, regardless of where he – or she – was or was not supposed to be. Then, nay doubt, she was supposed to thank him for his bravery, bestow him with a kiss, and let matters proceed naturally from there. She could see the little bronze pot sitting in plain sight on the sideboard, reminding her. To take what she wanted. To defy them. Or give into them.

She let out a slow, heaving breath.

 “Killian,” she said.

His head jerked up at the sound of his right name. He stared at her. “Swan?”

“What?” She blinked. “What’s that?”

“I – it’s how I’ve thought of you. Ever since. As I said. A swan who should spread her wings and fly.” He glanced away, a flush burning up his elegant cheekbones. “Just my name, my thought. I apologize, mistress.”

“No,” Emma blurted. “Don’t.”

Once more, that blue gaze so heavily shadowed by his dark lashes, by his odd blend of violence and brusqueness and sarcasm to everyone else, but strange and gentle tenderness and care to her, came to bear. He didn’t blink. He waited.

Emma took another breath. “I want,” she said, “for you to run away.”

Killian seemed to require a moment to process. “And how,” he said at last, deliberately, “do you suggest I do that?”

“It’s the first night of the _Ludi Romani._ My parents are gone. Everyone of any status is at the colosseum, and all the plebeians are on the streets, drinking and feasting. Even the centurions on the gates are far more interested in betting on the chariot races and making plans to visit brothels. Put on a cloak and hood, take this – ” Emma held out her Aurelius signet ring – “and nobody will challenge you. There are trading caravans that leave every day for every corner of the empire. Go back to your Hibernia. Go back to your. . . wife.” She could barely get her lips around the word. “Milah, that was her name. Wasn’t it? I free you, Killian mac Dáithí, from this moment forward. You are not, nor have you ever been, a slave. Run.”

He stared back at her, utterly dumbstruck. “Was it you?” he said at last, in a croak. “Is that why you brought me here?”

“I didn’t. It was. . . someone else, for their own selfish reasons. I will not play their game.” Emma tugged at his arm, trying to make him understand. “Please, Killian. You’re no slave. You’re a man. A man of honor. This is the only thing I can give you. Please. _Go.”_

He seemed irresolute. She could feel the tension coursing through him, but he remained frozen, like a man in a dream, not sure if it would fade away if he grasped for it. If it was a trick or trap or an illusion. “Emma. . .” he said at last, his voice faint and aching. “Emma, I. . .”

“No.” Emma pulled away with a jerk; it felt as if her hands were still burning where she had touched him, as if all of her was. “We don’t have time to waste. Hurry.”

At that, Killian seemed to surface from his stupor. Realize that if he did not take this opportunity he might never have another, would live and die in servitude far from the distant green shores of his native land, his people, his queer gods with their queer names ( _Manannán mac Lir,_ Emma repeated to herself in her head, so as not to forget. _Danu. Tuatha D_ _é._ She would make offerings to them as well, every time she went to the temple. Ask them to carry him swiftly home.) They found a cloak, a hood, an old toga of David’s to disguise him as a freeman, a shortsword, a satchel for food. Then Emma opened her purse and pressed a few golden denarii into his hand, a few sestertii as well so he would not have to risk robbery on the road. Then she slid the signet ring onto his smallest finger, unable to think of anything but how Baelius had slid the ring onto hers. “Say you’re on the praetor’s business, if you’re stopped,” she said, her voice sounding crushed and choked and small in her chest. “That should get you far enough away from Rome for you to have a good head start when they catch on.”

“Emma. . .” He seemed to have entirely forgotten that it was not decorous to call her by her given name, as they were hurrying through the gardens together to the small postern gate in the villa wall. “Emma, I can’t thank you enough.”

“Don’t thank me.” They reached the gate, and she summoned up the nerve. Now she was going to have to do it. Let him go for good, and condemn herself to a lifetime as Gaia Baelia Cassiania. She couldn’t think about it, couldn’t look at him. “Not until you survive it.”

She felt more than saw his mouth twist into a crooked smile. Felt him reach out, his hand hovering near her shoulder as if to touch her one last time, but was afraid he would never be able to go if he did. Or perhaps that was merely what she wanted to believe. Terrified herself that it was true, she turned her back, pulled down the bar on the gate, and opened it, leading them both out into the narrow alleyway beyond. Trees overhung the path, and the mud squashed under her delicate beaded slippers. She could hear him breathing steadily behind her, following her step for step, until they emerged into the lane that snaked down to the bottom of the hill. From here, both of them could see the city laid out, the gates, and the dark countryside beyond.

Emma gulped down a tremulous little breath. She didn’t dare to go farther; even out here she was too exposed, couldn’t shake the fear of someone seeing her. “There,” she whispered. “Hurry.”

Killian glanced at her sidelong again. He seemed to be struggling just as much, though the hood was hiding what she could see of his face. Then at last he blew out an unsteady breath and turned to her. “There’s not a day that will go by,” he said, “when I don’t think of you.”

Emma could only look back at him, look and look and look, imprint him onto her heart, burn herself with it, break. The only word that came to mind was one, small and simple.

“Good.”

Killian blew out another breath. He turned away convulsively, and then back. And then before either of them knew what was happening (or did they?) or what could, they were both reaching for each other, clawing into each other’s arms, their mouths meeting, his hand fiercely cradling her head, her lips opening, as she breathed him, she fell into him, every angle and every line of their bodies moved into harmony, and she wrapped herself into him, kissing him, closing her eyes, letting him sway her back and forth in his embrace, the last one they would ever have. She’d keep this, she’d _cherish_ this, even if he forgot her one day, even if he went back and had the happiest life that could be managed, and gods, she wished that for him even while her heart was breaking. Stroked the back of his neck, sliding her fingers through his hair. He cradled her. She completed him. Neither of them seemed able even to stand upright without the other.

“Come with me,” Killian panted into her mouth. “Swan. My swan. Come with me.”

“I – ” Like _this?_ She had not dressed for it, had not dared to. Had only made provisions for him, knowing how terrifyingly easy it would be if she even let herself think about it. “I can’t.”

“Aye. If you choose it.” His gaze bored through her. She couldn’t let go of him, couldn’t make her fingers unclench, couldn’t do it, couldn’t _do_ it, don’t ask her. “I’ll protect you. We can do this. Both of us. Together. Be free.”

“But your – your wife – ”

“Milah’s dead.” His voice broke roughly on the word, but he never stopped looking at her. “Killed in the uprising. My fault. She’s gone, lass. There’s nothing back there for me.”

Emma rested her forehead against his, still out of breath from that kiss, their noses brushing. Couldn’t help but kiss him again, then, and know somewhere in her heart that she was lost, had been from the moment she laid eyes on him, and he on her. Turned boneless in his arms again, needing him so fiercely that it made her gasp, as he trailed one hand down her back, caressing her, holding her. Then she was stumbling back with him into the alley, and it was not controlled and careful and scented and silken as Regina would have had it, but madness, nothing but madness. His careful, tender fingers stroking her, her arms wrapped around his neck as he lifted her, their bodies locked. The press of his hardness against her leg, the way she hooked her ankles around him, how she was about to break apart or burn because she did not have enough hands to touch him with, his kisses pressed into her neck and shoulder, worshiping her. How she knew that if she did not stop him now, there was no going back.

She did not stop him.

There was no going back.

When he entered her, after all the gentle touches and caresses and preparation, it barely hurt at all. He slid into her, stretching her, filling her, throbbing inside her like a heart, his eyes closed, his lips pressed into her sweaty, tangled hair, murmuring wordless Gaelic imprecations that must have been prayers. Her body arched up into him, pulling tight, slick and hot and wet. Let him slide deeper a bit at a time, finding her, making her pant hard against his shoulder as she held onto him, her braids coming undone. As he had her up against a wall like some common slattern, and how she could not care in the least. She could hear the soft wet carnal sounds they were both making, could feel the steady pressure rising, the friction between them as he held her as if she was a fragile eggshell. She pushed back on him experimentally, and felt him respond almost at once, riding back on her, finding a tentative rhythm, god, good, _good,_ she loved it, loved him, loved him, loved him. Bunched her fists in his dark hair, every inch of him still held under control, until at last she kissed his ear and bit it and pulled it between her teeth, and he snapped.

Killian rode her like a tempest, like a ship at sea, like the wind and the waves sweeping them both away. Until she lost all sense of what was his body and what was hers, as he would rise to an almost unbearable tempo and then slow down, prolonging it, taking his time about each stroke, as she jerked and gasped and squirmed and shuddered, possessed by him, yet able by the smallest gestures or motions or kisses to seize control back, to turn him to molten gold in her hands. Then it was faster, and then still faster, and then he pressed her back against the wall and lost himself, as instants later she did the same, clutching him and dying of the light.

Sense returned only belatedly. They untangled themselves badly and slowly. She thought of the herbs left behind in Regina’s quarters, how it would be madness or suicide to try to go back and get them (and sundry other things) now. She felt giddy. Drunk. Lightheaded. She had done it. Ruined herself, or saved herself. Made her choice.

“Here.” Killian’s voice sounded like a broken husk of itself as he pulled off the cloak and draped it around her. “Folk will know you much sooner than me. We have to. If we are. If we’re going.”

Emma looked at him. There was silence, for the longest moment. Then she reached out and took his hand.

He squeezed it, hard and tenderly and desperately. Both of them took a step forward. Only one.

Then the shadows shifted. Took form around the man standing at the end of the alley. How long he had been there, or how much he had seen, it was impossible to say. But he was wearing a cloak and a hood thrown back, and something that looked oddly like crocodile skin beneath. It made him look almost less than human, spectral. And Emma knew him at once.

 _Aurum._ Gold.

Him.

“Well, well,” said Gaius Flavius Cassianus, and giggled. “What _ever_ have we here?”


	5. Chapter 5

“No.” It was the first, instinctive word that sprang to Emma’s lips, as she moved to put herself between the two men. “This – it’s not – ”

“Oh, I suspect it’s exactly what it looks like, dearie,” Gaius Flavius Cassianus commented sleekly. “You don’t want to try to argue your way out of this, because you can’t. After all the trouble I’ve gone to in order to ensure that this wedding would happen. . . why?” He shook his head, like a kindly uncle or benevolent patron deeply disappointed in his favorite protégé’s behavior. “And with a slave? I always considered you a young woman of refined sensibilities and good breeding, but clearly I was quite mistaken.”

“Leave her out of this.” It was Killian who spoke, stepping out from behind Emma and shielding her with his arm. “It was my fault. I dragged her down here and forced myself on her. Look at her – do you think she’s dressed in any fashion to run? You want me. Take me.”

“Aye, it looked as if she was not enjoying it in the least.” Gold – his moniker had never more perfectly fit him as he stood there, bright and hard and soulless – raised an eyebrow, then grinned, looking thoroughly reptilian. “You don’t understand, do you? I know. I know everything. When I contrived to betroth my son to you, I had informants placed in your household, so I would not be caught off guard by an unfortunate scandal such as this. When I heard of Regina’s mad plan to yield your purity to that slave. . .” He shook his head. “I could not intervene until I knew if you were the sort to be tempted. And thus, I have learned everything I need to know. That filthy barbarian has stolen what belongs to me and by my right, what I bought and paid for, and I am not the sort of man who cares to be robbed. So, then. _So.”_

“Please.” Emma’s voice sounded thin, desperate, and she hated it. “Consul, don’t. I – I can – ”

“You can what? Pay me? Oh believe me, dearie, what do you think you have that I could possibly want?  So no, you cannot pay me. What we’re going to do is this. We’re going to make a deal.”

Emma and Killian exchanged a wary glance. “What deal?”

“Oh, just this.” The sly bastard was almost dancing on the spot. “We have the _Ludi Romani_ going on at the very moment, do we not? And our mutual friend here, the slave, fought so admirably in the gladiatorial games where he first drew your attention. So, then. That’s my bargain. If he goes back into the arena and defeats my champion, then I will let you both go free. I’ll break off the betrothal, I’ll be of no consequence in either of your lives again. On my honor.”

Emma’s breath caught. She didn’t want to think it would be so easy, couldn’t. Anyone Killian faced in the arena, with the stakes this high, would be a seasoned and ruthless killer, a veteran of countless matches with life and death balancing on his blade. Not that she doubted Killian’s ability – only Gold’s integrity, his willingness to keep to the bargain, and near everything else about him. Not to mention what must be coming. “And if. . .?”

“And if he dies? Which would be terribly tragic, of course? Well then. The slave would be quite dead, I expect. As for you, dearie. . .” Gold snapped his teeth. “I’ll ruin you. I’ll let it be known far and wide what sort of dishonor you’ve brought on your house and father and family, how you defied me, how you spat on every virtue and value that Rome and the Empire stands for, and how there is nothing more disorderly to the very pillars of society themselves than a disobedient and unchaste woman. Especially one who spent her purity on _this._ So then. Do we have a deal?”

“I want your word,” Killian growled. “Your _word,_ crocodile, that this will be as you said. If I defeat your champion, you let her go. You release her from the engagement and never breathe anything of it to anybody.”

“On my honor.” Gold flourished an elaborate bow. “Give me your hand.”

Killian hesitated a long moment, then slowly reached out. Emma noticed at once, however, that it was his _left_ hand, the unclean and inauspicious one, _sinistra,_ an insult that the consul could not fail to notice. But at the same time, there was something unusual about Gold’s hand, the way his body was tilted, the fact that the shortsword he had been wearing at his waist had suddenly disappeared, and the way the predatory smile had reappeared, the sudden conviction that –

Emma’s outcry got stuck in her throat an instant too late. Instead she had to watch, transfixed, as a blade flashed in the moonlight, came down, and Killian staggered, screaming in pain, as something fell into the mud. Gold stooped with a triumphant smirk to retrieve it, and in sickening horror, Emma realized that it was Killian’s hand. As in the one that moments ago had been attached to his wrist, still dripping dark blood. Killian was on his knees, clutching at his maimed arm, swearing in Gaelic, choking and gasping, and it was in that instant that Emma realized she had been counting on him to be invulnerable, the same ruthless warrior who’d murdered his first opponents without remorse.  Yet in one brief moment, Gold had – he had –

“You son of a _dog!”_ Emma lunged forward, having no fathom of what she was doing, only knowing that she wanted to hurt him and hurt him badly. But he had already turned his back, sauntering away without an apparent care in the world, and she had no weapon at all; there was nothing to stop him from doing the same to her. And she had something more urgent to attend to, the only thing she could. She spun on her heel and ran back to Killian.

She tore her chiton off at the hem and wrapped the long strips around his wrist, but the white cloth at once drank up the blood and bloomed dark red. She pressed as hard as she could, having a faint notion that pressure was supposed to help, but Killian made an ungodly noise and tried to jerk his arm away from her. “Go,” he croaked, retching. “Go, get away. Run for it. Find your parents, tell them it’s all a misunderstanding. Anything. Don’t stay. Not when – ”

 _“No!”_ Emma slung his good arm over her shoulders, braced herself, and hauled him to his feet; he tottered, nearly losing his balance, but she refused to let him fall. She tightened the bloodstained rags around his stump, tore off another hunk of cloth, and tied it clumsily in a knot, fingers shaking. “We have to find someone to take care of this.”

“Who?” He almost went to his knees again. “No one in Rome is going to treat a slave, especially if you tell them why. Emma. . . lass. . . don’t. It’s too late. Leave me.”

“You’re wrong.” She shifted him into a better position, then started to walk, one step after another, breath burning in her chest from his weight and the exertion, feet slipping in the mud and sweat stinging her eyes. “There’s one place.”

\---------------

She had heard of them before, if only in passing. The pagans and heretics who lived in the catacombs under the city, who professed allegiance to none of the traditional deities nor the emperor, who jealously clung to their one god and insisted that others must do the same, a source of constant grievance and woe to the fortunes of the empire for their refusal to pay proper homage or perform the ritual sacrifices. Jews at least were tolerated due to being ancient, but these were not even quite Jews, and in retaliation for their supposedly causing the great fire some decades ago, Emperor Nero had had several dozen of them thrown to dogs or burned as human torches. Emma ordinarily would not have consorted with such dangerous and strange people by her own will, but as she was currently most in sympathy with anything that defied Rome, and as the pagans were said to take in and treat the sick, poor, widows, orphans, lepers, slaves, and other such outcasts that polite society washed its hands of, she had no choice but to seek their help.

It was a painful, arduous climb across the city to the alleys that led into the catacombs, and they were nearly caught on half a dozen occasions, just barely ducking out of sight in time. At last, however, they crawled into the dark, low passages, with shafts of moonlight slanting through at odd intervals, their footsteps muffled in the dust. Killian was on the very last shreds of consciousness, and he lost it just as they emerged in the central chamber, lit flickeringly by twisted, gremlin candles, low and smoky; they were made of animal fat, not the fine white tallow used by the rich. Killian glanced around with a glazed expression, then folded facefirst into the ground, arms outspread, blood pooling into the dirt beneath his left arm.

Their unexpected ingress soon drew the attention of the place’s inhabitants, and they peered out warily, clearly expecting trouble. But when Emma managed to explain to them that she needed them to take care of Killian, and would be willing to pay whatever it cost, they sprang into action quickly enough. The head of the community told her that all they asked was that she give the money to their fund for widows, and Emma agreed; she would have agreed to hand over all her jewels and rare perfumes and fine clothes if they wanted. None of that mattered anymore.

She helped them lift Killian onto a slab, and held him by the shoulders, wincing every time he swore and screamed and sobbed, as the pagans cleaned his arm, did their best to stem the bleeding, and cauterized it with hot iron. They padded the stump in wool and bandaged it in linen, but he kept tossing and thrashing in hellish agony, balling his good hand and hitting the stone over and over until his knuckles cracked and bruised. He passed out again at last, which was a small mercy, but kept jerking back to the surface, and what Emma could see in the slits of his eyes was terrifying. It was fixated, maddened, almost demonic, and he seemed capable of repeating only five words, over and over, in a broken patois of Latin and Gaelic. “I’m going to kill him,” he mumbled, feverish and frantic. “I’m going to kill him.”

Emma held a jug of water to his lips, trying to get him to drink something, but most of it ended up spilled down her torn, bloodstained chiton. One of the women went to fetch her fresh garb, and Emma changed; it was a rough homespun tunic, nothing that she had ever worn before as the praetor’s daughter, but she would have worn sackcloth without complaint. The entire night felt like a dream. How could she have started it going to Regina’s quarters, deciding to free Killian, then being unable to let him go and taking him far more permanently than she’d ever meant, then being caught by Gold, his unthinkable bargain, Killian’s injury and struggling all the way here, and realizing that she had no notion of where to go or what to do next. Could they simply hide down here, for days or perhaps weeks? Yet she could not imagine that Gold would be content to let them disappear into thin air. There were the Games, his threat to send Killian into the arena, the betrothal to Baelius, the realization that he could be at the villa now, pouring the gods only knew what sordid tale into her parents’ ear. . . Regina would be aghast and exasperated that she had not merely taken from Killian what she was supposed to, and left it at that. _Why did I not?_ It would have been easier, far easier, and he might still be whole, might have run and. . .

She couldn’t think of it. There was no rhyme or reason. She slept a few fitful hours, curled up on a mat beneath the ossuaries containing the dust of their dead fellows, as the candles went out and only Killian’s faint moans stirred the darkness. When she awoke, she watched the pagans pray and wondered why the greatest empire in the world considered them any sort of threat. Surely _Roma_ and the pantheon would not rescind their patronage that had stood for over a thousand years since the time of Remus and Romulus, simply because these poor, ragged, insignificant people neglected a sacrifice or two. Surely the gods should care more for the opinion of the emperor and the other great men? _Men like Gaius Flavius Cassianus._ Her mouth twisted bitterly. She felt tempted to offer up a few prayers in hopes of hastening his demise as well.

Emma stayed in the corner until one of the women came to give her a coarse-grained loaf of bread and a few drops of salt and oil, which she choked down in hopes of appeasing the hunger stabbing her stomach. She had never missed a meal, never had to wonder where the next day’s provenance was coming from, but that looked to be the least of her troubles. As distant dawn light speared down through the tunnels, and she felt her heart ache with the desire to just go home and crawl into bed and wake up to all this being only a dream, she rubbed her gritty eyes and padded across the grotto to Killian.

He was lying in semi-consciousness, covered by a thin grey blanket, head curled on his good arm and his maimed one awkwardly extended. Dark, dried bloodstains showed on the bandages, and she reached out, hand skimming over his shoulder, afraid to actually touch him. “Killian?”

After an interlude just long enough to make her fear that he had shut her out as well, he flickered one eye open to look at her. His voice was a hoarse, sandy rasp. “Aye?”

“I’m. . . I’m sorry. This wouldn’t have happened if I just – ”

“No.” He pushed himself upright, then reeled and nearly fell again. The heavy muscles in his shoulder and arm were trembling like a plucked string, his teeth bared, his eyes unseeing and savage. “It wouldn’t have happened if Cassianus wasn’t a bloody animal.  A reptile. _Crocodile._ I’m going to kill him. _Kill him.”_

“Brother?” It was the man who had been treating him last night, looking worried. “You are still weak, and the wound could open if you are not cautious. You should – ”

“No.” Killian, shuddering, hauled himself to a sitting position. “You have something for this? Anything?”

After a few more frowns and protests, the man hurried off and shortly returned with a length of tanned and cured leather. He removed the bloody linen, changed the wool, and then sewed the leather around the stump with an awl and waxed thread, creating a makeshift brace. “You should not use the arm if you can avoid it. Otherwise – ”

“I have a fight to win.” Killian swung his legs over the side of the slab and to the ground, testing his weight. His eyes flickered around the tunnels, clearly in search of something, until they fell on the well, rigged up with a rope, a hook, and a bucket to draw water up from the underground sources of the Tiber. He lurched across the floor, and before anyone could take it into their mind to stop him, pulled the hook loose. After a prolonged period of experimentation, he managed to get it wedged into the brace, collected the spare thread, and lashed it tightly down. When he tried an experimental swing, the hook whistled and slashed through the air like a dangerous weapon, making everyone in the vicinity take a startled step backwards.

“Good.” A smile crossed Killian’s gaunt, wracked face. “All I need is a whetstone.”

“You. . . you’re. . .” Slowly, horribly, Emma grasped his plan. _“You’re going to fight in the arena after all?”_

“A man who doesn’t fight for what he wants, deserves what he gets. And I will be _damned_ if I let that _maggot,_ that festering filthy _whoreson_ and the men he serves _,_ think they can get away with doing this to me, one more time. This empire is corrupt and immoral, it has taken my brother, my home, my family, my wife, my freedom, and now it seeks to take my hand and make me kiss its boot. No. _Enough.”_

“Killian.” Emma took a step, imploring. “At least – ”

 _“I want revenge!”_ Killian roared, loud enough to echo eerily away down the stone labyrinths, so it seemed as if a legion shouted them back. “Live or die, I will do it as a free man, by my own choice, by my own hand. I will not suffer another hour as a slave. I am not running away. I am not backing down. If they want to face me. . .” He inhaled a slow, ragged breath, opening and closing his good fist. “They can bloody well have me. I understand if you want to go, lass. Leave me. I would. I’ve already cost you enough. This is for me now. I must.”

The silence felt thick, towering, impossible, climbing higher and higher around them both, as she stared at him. It seemed as if a depthless abyss yawned between them, and only telling their darkest secrets could build its bridge. And so, taking the risk, she steeled herself and told hers.

As dark, as dangerous, as desolate as this future was, it was the only one she could see.

“No,” she whispered. “I’m coming with you.”

\----------------

They climbed to the surface slowly, painfully, squinting when they emerged into the sun as if they had been underground for weeks or months. They both had cloaks with hoods, and the toga they had stolen for Killian last night; they could pass for a plebeian couple on their way to see the spectacle. They hitched a ride on one of the countless carts bumping along the crowded thoroughfares toward the colosseum, Killian still hissing in pain every time they hit a bump. But then they were there, spilling out among the crowd, and he seemed to know precisely where he was going. She trailed behind him, until he turned, caught hold of her wrist, and pressed her back against the sunbaked brick. “No,” he whispered. “I go from here alone, lass.”

“What – no, I’m going to – ”

 _“Please.”_ Even in the burning light of the midday sun, he looked pale and ill. “This is where they take in the slaves. The gladiators. If you have to watch this, go buy a seat in the commons. I expect you’ll see me soon enough.”

“Killian. . .” She could find no words to say, nothing that her tongue would shape around, no way to catch the unformed, desperate feeling that clutched at her. At last, all she could do was bunch her fists in his cloak, pull him in, and kiss him as hard as she could.

He grunted low in his throat, and kissed her back, their heads turning, mouths moving, lips opening, tasting, until at last she had to force herself to pull back, their foreheads and noses still touching, breathing each other. Then he whispered, “Please. Don’t follow me.”

It broke her, but she didn’t.

\----------------

Emma bought a place among the commoners’ terrace and squeezed in, smelling her neighbors’ sweat, oniony breath, unwashed reek, and general malodor. All she could think of was how she had reclined in the shade in the luxury box reserved for the praetor’s family at the games that had started this all, where she had watched Killian fight for the first time and been intrigued enough to risk everything, to insist on his freedom. Now, in a demented, horrible way, it had come full circle. She was standing here in disguise, not certain what was coming or even if it was, only waiting, _waiting._ Her parents must be sick with worry. Frantic. Had Gold told them? He must have. It was madness to think he would keep his bargain. He had asked for Killian’s hand to seal it, and then quite literally taken it. _We are both dead._ Exile seemed too kind a fate to hope for.

Emma paid no attention to the combat going on below, the displays of athletic prowess, a gladiator matched against a lion, until at last they were dragging the beast’s corpse away and the proud victor was strutting around to the approving roars of the crowd. A slim, smirking youth of not more than sixteen, he was a great favorite of the commons. He called himself Pan, after the Greek god, and always fought with a set of pipes dangling from his waist; he played a mocking funeral dirge on them after driving his blade through his foe’s brain. He must have been born and bred his entire life for the arena; he was fast as a serpent and just as deadly. He had never lost a bout or failed to kill whatever man or beast he was set against, and he was –

Emma’s breath caught in her throat, choking –

– _known_ to be a particular favorite of Gaius Flavius Cassianus, who had sponsored his training and won large wagers on him on long odds, who bragged that he had cultivated him as the one who would never be defeated even if –

While everyone else was still engrossed with Pan, she was staring, petrified, at the great barred door on the far side, where they loosed wild animals and other fighters into the pit. She suddenly knew what was going to happen, knew it sudden and terribly to the core of her, and could only watch as the gate began, rattling, to rise. To reveal, silhouetted in the shadows, a lone figure.

Pan had noticed nothing, was still basking in the adoration of his public, as the figure stepped out. Clad in gladiator’s costume of _manica,_ greaves, sandals, loincloth, and shortsword. His left wrist was shrouded and tied in rough cloth, concealing the hook that Emma knew he wore underneath in place of the missing hand. Step by step, he advanced, inexorable as a nightmare.

A sudden hush began to fall over the raucous thousands as the new challenger was noticed, followed by a whisper fast as wildfire. Even the mighty colosseum seemed stilled, wondering if this was part of the games or something much different, as Killian mac Dáithí came to a halt at the very center of the arena and drove his sword into the ground before him, waiting. Pan turned, no longer smiling. Stared at him. Then, understanding the challenge for what it was, began to move across the sand with short, sharp strides.

Emma saw the guards on the surrounds exchange baffled looks, clearly having no idea if they should leap in and pull the two apart, or let it play out as it would. Pan and Killian were already circling like a pair of stalking panthers, swords out, and the crowd had clearly begun to think this was a final match, a treat, an unexpected joust for their favorite, and was happily preparing to lay more wagers and sit back to enjoy the show. _Gods, if Killian kills him –_ yet that was too much even to hope for. He was making a fair show of it, feinting and bluffing, but Emma knew he could not hold out for long. The pain must be incapacitating. If Pan sniffed out his weakness, and scored even a glancing hit on his left arm, he would be done for.

She twisted her fingers together, briefly afraid she was going to pass out, as Pan and Killian closed even tighter. The crowd was chanting or shouting, some of them holding thumbs down to indicate that they wanted the arrogant challenger killed and killed immediately, but others seemed impressed by his bravery or appreciative of his madness; Pan was well known as the Cassianii creature, after all, and the Cassianii were certainly not without a myriad of enemies. Emma wondered how many of their opponents or their opponents’ slaves they had sent in to die here, how many under-the-table “arrangements” they had made, certain of Pan’s prowess to free them from any obligation to uphold them. _It ends. It ends now._

One moment the two fighters were still circling, and then they lunged. Steel met steel with a rending crash, sending up sparks, and then, after a final breath in which all hung by the princess of Crete’s magic thread, they were at each other’s throats. Hacking and hammering, twisting, thrusting, slashing, uppercuts, backhands, a rain of steel on each other, blows sliding and shrieking off, almost too fast to follow. Pan went low, and Killian spun away, coming at him again, a thunderous roar going up as first blood was scored, dripping off Killian’s arm and making Emma’s heart stop – but it was the _right_ arm, and only a shallow wound. The cuts came harder and harder, and Killian was gaining ground, forcing Pan back onto his heels, relentless as a tempest or a thunderstorm, using his superior size and weight on the younger, smaller man. Yet then Pan was recovering, coming back, blades locked over their heads, teeth bared. Reversing from the deadlock and slashing, Pan sensing victory, one more for the laurel crown, another pipe to play, another deal that Gold would win and then they all were damned and –

Everything seemed to happen very slowly.

Pan slammed the flat of his blade into his enemy’s wound, and Killian buckled. Went to one knee, empty hand raising as if in futile defiance – Pan upraised, poised for the kill –

And then, as Emma’s scream caught in her throat, Killian flung up his _left_ arm.

He caught Pan’s sword with a horrible rasp of metal on metal, twisted his wrist, and flung it away, as the cloth tore and the sun flashed on the lethally glimmering edge of the hook and the crowd gasped as one in a mixture of shock and horror and disbelief. Then Killian was up, clearly on his last reserves of strength, reaching for Pan, reaching, _reaching,_ staggering, grabbing him with his right hand, pulling him closer, almost into a tender embrace –

Then, with one swift, utterly merciless slash, opening his throat from ear to ear.

Pan staggered, clutching uselessly at the wound, falling back, folding, facedown, blood blooming red, red, crimson, scarlet, ruby, black. Killian was still standing, but not for much longer. Reeling back, then falling, not getting up, not moving, both of them downed, dying or dead, as the roars of the crowd sounded almost bestial in Emma’s ears, far away, dreamy, fainter and fainter, as the sky and the sun both turned white and then, slowly and softly, to darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

Demons swarmed in the darkness, screaming and screaming, clawing at her face and snatching at her feet. Every time Emma raised a hand to ward them off, they bit into her flesh, making blood run red down her forearm until she looked and realized that the hand was gone, and only grisly bone remained. She tried to stanch the flow, but couldn’t; her other hand was crisping to ash, gulped up in the inferno. Somewhere far away, swords clashed under a blazing sky, and she remembered that something dreadful was happening and she had to get there, but her legs had turned to tar. No matter how much she ran, she never moved. Then the ground tilted out from  beneath her, opening into a depthless abyss, and she was falling.

Emma plunged through endless blackness, hit the bottom with a jerk, and opened her eyes.

Everything was so bleary and formless that it took her several moments to register if she was even awake. Then the world began to coalesce, sending a stabbing pain through her head as it did, and she belatedly recognized the ceiling of her own room, in her own bed in the Aurelius villa, a realization that sent shock lurching through her. What the – how had – she had wanted this all to just be a dream, and now if it was, if it could please be, if she could close her eyes and slip back under and awake to a morning where she had never let any of this happen and –

But even as she prayed it, she knew it wasn’t. She felt achy and bruised and beaten, exhausted, eyes gritty, and too sore and heartsick for it to be anything but real. She watched the camphor flame flicker in the lamp for a while, counted her heartbeats, tried to patch together what must have happened. After seeing Killian kill Pan in the arena – after seeing him go down as well, blood blooming like Persephone’s pomegranate, the white sun, the roars of the crowd –

She must have lost consciousness, Emma decided. Perhaps in the disorder, she had been fortunate – or unfortunate – enough to be recognized as the praetor’s daughter, and thence taken home instead of the _Aesculapium_ on Tiber island, where the poor and sick and plague victims were sent for convalescence. But if she was here, then that meant he was –

Emma sat bolt upright, ignoring the sickening whirl of her head, and swung her legs over the side of the lecto. She didn’t know what she was going to do or where she was going to go, only that she couldn’t stay here, and got as far as halfway across the floor, bare feet padding on the warm clay tiles, when she was abruptly interrupted by the entrance of a flustered servant. “My lady? My lady! You should not be up! You need your rest, you need – ”

“An explanation, for a start.” Regina, looking sleek and composed, materialized behind the servant and made it clear in no uncertain terms that her presence was no longer required. It was only when she had fled, and Regina stepped into the room and shut the door, that the mask crumbled. “You foolish, _stupid_ girl! What in the name of the _gods_ did you think you were doing?”

Emma flinched. “I wanted to – ”

“I gave you a chance to have what you wanted of him, and have that be that. Now. . . this?” Regina waved a scathing hand, clearly unable to think of an epithet foul enough. “Though I do thank you for the revelation of the Cassianus spy in my household. He sang sweetly enough, told me everything I needed to know.”

“And he won’t run back and tell the – ”

“Oh, there’s a talent for making sure they sing only to you.” Regina grinned, dark and feral. “I doubt he’ll be doing much more talking with a cut throat. Now, my _dear._ We have very little time, and you’d do best not to waste it by talking. As you are so fortunately awake, you’ll be going.” She put a hand on Emma’s back and steered her curtly across the room, out through the columns and down the narrow garden stair, past the fountain and arbor. To judge from the blur of blood-red on the eastern horizon, it was just before dawn. “You are going to the countryside villa, and if anyone asks, it will be put about that you are preparing for your marriage to Baelius. That should buy us a little time, if not much.”

“For what?”

“For _what?”_ Regina’s grip tightened to a claw. “Don’t you understand what you’ve done? Your pet slave killed Gold’s pet slave! And suddenly all the other unfortunates who made deals with him, sealed on the edge of Pan’s sword, have cause to wonder if their loss is still binding. The rats will come out of the woodwork now, mark my words. Gaius Flavius Cassianus is the most powerful man in the empire behind Hadrian. Heads _will_ roll.”

“But I thought – ” Emma stumbled to keep up. “I thought that was what you wanted!”

“Did I?” Regina mused grimly. “No matter. The point is, if you want to keep _your_ empty head on your dainty little shoulders, you’ll do very well to be out of the city, far from any apparent interference or involvement. You threw my last gift in my face. If you do likewise with this one, it’s liable to be the last thing you _ever_ do.”

“But – ” Emma knew she was right, but still couldn’t accept it out of hand. “What about Killian?”

Regina stopped short and let out a bitter curse of frustration. “Do you think that’s any concern of mine? If you’d done what you were _supposed_ to, he’d be safe! It was your idiocy in trying to free him that led to this. He’s a slave. He’ll die, and he deserves it.”

“No.” Emma didn’t move. “He’s not. I freed him. And he won. I’m not going to let Gold get away with killing him. And besides.” She didn’t know if it was a weakness, or if she was merely delusional, but she had to grasp for whatever she could. “Would you do the same if it was Robin?”

Regina remained motionless for a moment longer, then cursed again. Without another word, she snatched Emma by the wrist and nearly dragged her along, down to the very same postern gate that she and Killian had escaped through the first time. Regina removed a set of keys from her shawl – stealing them from the household had earned a wife severe punishment, even death, not that long ago – and shoved it open, then escorted Emma out into the alley. A cart and driver, half-hidden in the shadows, were waiting, and Regina shoved Emma tersely toward the canvas-draped back. As Emma crawled underneath it, making sure she was hidden, she saw Regina bend toward the driver and say something in a low voice. It was only when he answered that she recognized Robin’s voice.

Emma watched through the slit in the drape, tense and nervous, as Robin nodded once. Then Regina leaned down, took his face in her hands, and kissed him for one long moment, her loosened black hair tumbling over them both. Robin’s own hand floated up as if to touch her, but didn’t quite. Then they pulled away, Regina said something else, and Robin cracked the whip over the ox’s back. Squeaking and lumbering, they rolled down the steep streets of Palatine Hill, which were still mostly empty. Emma lay still and tense, having no idea what was meant for her.

They crossed the city, a seemingly interminable journey, and then finally slowed. Peering through, Emma saw the great shadow of the colosseum towering over them, huge and silent in the thin grey predawn light. Empty of its screaming crowds and clashing gladiators, the pomp and spectacle and circumstance of the _Ludi Romani,_ preparing for another round of bloodsport and death on the morrow. She opened her mouth, about to say something, but Robin turned and gave her a very sharp look. Then from under his hooded cloak, he removed a shortsword and buckled it around his waist. It was death for any slave to be caught armed, especially after the Spartacus and the six thousand crucified rebels, and Emma’s breath caught. _What is he –_

Once more, Robin silenced her with a glance. Then he stood up and jumped to the ground, and she watched as he stole off. They couldn’t have much time, and she squirmed around, possessed by a sudden and uncontrollable urge to follow him. But she had enough sense to realize that there was nothing she could do, and as if in a dream, her thoughts drifted to her parents. Did they know she was all right? Had they disowned her? Were they themselves protesting their innocence to Gold at this very moment? The thought of just how much trouble her defiance could have caused made Emma feel lightheaded – and oddly exultant. _I’m not yours. I don’t belong to you._ And come whatever may, it would not include her marriage to Baelius.

At last, the sound of running footsteps broke her reverie. She balanced herself on a knee and peered out – just in time to see Robin nearly throwing a comatose Killian on top of her. The story of how he had sprung his fellow from whatever miserable bolthole he’d been held prisoner down was clearly going to go untold, as Robin sprinted back around to the driver’s seat, leapt up, and jolted them into motion, the ox achieving such speed as to make Emma wonder if he’d been purloined from pulling Apollo’s chariot for the day. They jerked and rattled to the gates, had a brief and nerve-wracking encounter with the guards on the surrounds,  but were allowed to pass unquestioned when Robin must have flashed the praetor’s seal at them. Then they were out, out in the world beyond, and she got enough of a look to see that they were on the Via Appia, the road that ran south all the way to Brindisi. The Aurelius seaside villa lay in Terracina, a little over ten leagues distant. A messenger on a fast horse, riding hard and stopping little, could make it in a day, but with the luxuries of a patrician household and the correspondent leisurely pace, Emma had never done it in fewer than three.

Everything turned into an interminable blur. Emma braced her feet on the rough boards and managed to get her arms around Killian, holding him from sliding off the cart. He groaned and shifted, but never surfaced into consciousness. There was fresh blood on the tangled wrappings around the stump of his left arm; the hook was gone. _How long until they discover that we are as well?_ She knew that their lives remained horribly in danger, that all this was a ruse, smoke and misdirection, a conjurer’s trick on a stage. _He will find us. He will always find us._

Time continued to while past. They stopped, changed the ox for a fresh beast, and Robin thrust a waterskin and a loaf of hard brown bread under the canvas. Emma held Killian’s head and coaxed and cursed until she got a few drops and crumbs into him, then steeled herself for further hours of bone-bruising jolting. It was stiflingly hot with the sun full up and beating down on them, and a splinter was digging into her back, but she didn’t care. All she wanted was for them to get as far away from Rome as possible, from everything it meant and everything it symbolized. Even the villa was not far enough.

Despite the discomfort, she must have fallen asleep, lulled into a stupor by the steady movement. When she opened her eyes, her throat was as dry and scratchy as sand, it was nighttime, and they were rolling up to the villa, starlight twinkling on the wine-dark sea. It made her think of the adventures of Ulysses, and of his wife, plagued by unwanted suitors. _If only I had the weaving to unpick._ But then there was a blaze of torchlight, and Robin’s face looming over them, and it was time to go.

Emma scrambled out of the cart and nearly fell, cramped and weak and sore from hours and hours of hiding. But she regained her balance, and helped Robin with the tottering Killian, his arms draped over their shoulders as they hauled him up the path. Since the servants and slaves and soldiers were all back in Rome with the main household, there was nobody except the three of them, and Emma felt almost ghostly as they tramped through the garden and into the elegant, airy halls. They found Killian a bed and hoisted him onto it, and Robin checked the dressings of his wounds, a fine line carved between his brows the entire time. He was evasive when Emma asked if he would be all right, then departed to find them some more food.

When he was gone, Emma crawled up on the bed beside Killian and laid her head on his chest. The slow, deep thump of his heart was reassuring, and she closed her eyes, able to imagine for the moment that they were the only two people in the village, the empire, the world. She was tired, so tired, but didn’t want to drop back to sleep, for fear that he would somehow have been spirited away when she woke. She couldn’t begin to process the immensity of the last days. Only that somehow, impossibly, they were still together, still alive, still fighting.

Overcome by weariness, she gave into the soft darkness regardless of her protestations. When she woke again, rosy-fingered dawn was stealing in, and Killian was stirring next to her, a slit of blue showing beneath his eyelashes. He put out his good hand to grasp at her, looked stunned to discover that she was solid, and stared. “Lass?”

“It’s me.” Emma smiled tremulously. She couldn’t blame him for his confusion; the last that he would have been measurably aware of the situation, he was a prisoner in the colosseum under sentence of execution. “How – how are you feeling?”

Killian groaned. “Like death was knocked down and pissed on. Where the blazes are we?”

“Our country villa.” Emma shifted closer; the warmth of his body was welcome against the cool of the morning, and she couldn’t rid herself of the desire to touch him, just to be near him. “Robin got us here. We’ll take care of you.”

Killian’s eyelashes fluttered at the mention of his friend and comrade in arms,  but he didn’t reply. Instead, with a grunt of exertion, he reached up and carefully, lightly threaded her filthy, tangled hair through his bloody fingers, with a look of wonder and awe on his face as if he had just beheld his goddess Danu in the flesh. She didn’t want to hurt him further, but she couldn’t breathe, and all she could do was lower her lips to his, kissing him gently and then harder.

Killian sighed, then crushed her closer, as she rolled half on top of him. For the next several moments, he clearly neither noticed or cared less about any pain in his arm, as they explored each other with something close to desperation, hot and deep and fervent, tasting salt and blood and sweat, the sound of their mingled gasps echoing in the stillness. They had just started to investigate if they could possibly be rearranged into a more comfortable and conducive position when a pointed cough interrupted them. Robin was leaning against a pillar, one eyebrow raised.

Flushing, Emma hastily disentangled herself and sat up. Robin had apparently gone thieving through the surrounding orchards and terraces, and had brought back grapes, bread, and a few bug-eyed fish who clearly had not yet processed their sudden seizure from the ocean. This was converted more or less efficiently into a meal, and all three of them ate like ravenous buzzards. Killian’s color was better and his demeanor more spirited, and while his stump was still fairly hideous to look on, the pagans had done a thorough job stitching and cleaning it, and there was no reek of incipient infection. All that remained, it seemed, was if they could stay long enough to permit him to heal completely and then –

 _And then what?_ There was no way Killian could ever show his face in Rome again, at least not without then being stoned to death by a mob, and Emma’s own future was similarly nebulous. Even assuming that Gold refrained from destroying her entire family, their reputation and position and wealth and anything else he could get his claws on, she couldn’t imagine that he would be content to sit back and watch her make a new match, or otherwise get away without punishment. She had just poked the biggest dragon in this or any world directly in the eye, and there would beyond any doubt be consequences. _Very well._ Let them come.

Morning became afternoon. After the frantic hustle and bustle of Rome, this little seaside resort town felt quiet, somnolent, almost peaceful. Emma went down to the shore and waded knee-deep in the glittering blue water, feeling scandalously libertine. Her arms were already turning brown in the Mediterranean heat, her hair cascading in loosened curls over her shoulders. At last, when the shadows started to lengthen, she stepped out, slipped her sandals on, and trudged up the seaward wallwalk back toward the villa.

She was almost there when she stopped short, having a sudden and ineffable sense that something was wrong. The back of her neck was prickling, and she noticed the horse in the courtyard, one that had assuredly not been there when she departed, with an elaborate golden headstall and caparison. _Visitors._ Someone had known or guessed where they had fled. Someone had followed them. And she would have wagered every single denarius in the imperial treasury that she knew who.

Suddenly chill with dread, Emma advanced into the villa, clenching her fingers in her damp chiton. Windswept and salt-stained and sun-browned, she must look quite far from a proper lady indeed, but she did not care. She wasn’t, and wasn’t going to be. Let them nail her up too if they wished. Let them try. She would fight back just as hard. Show them who she was.

With head high and back straight, she walked into the inner sanctum, and stopped short, waiting.

“My lady Aurelia.” Still clad in his dusty traveling cloak and clothes, Gaius Flavius Cassianus turned to her and smiled. “We were waiting for you to grace us all with the delight of your company.”

A deep growl came from the couch. To judge from the way Robin’s arms were straining, it was taking all his strength to hold Killian back, even in the latter’s invalid state. Emma flashed her eyes to him, ordering him to control himself; if he charged Gold now, the loss of the other hand or worse would be the prompt result. Besides, they had to find out what he wanted now, and she addressed herself to the consul directly. “My lord. What a. . . surprise.”

“Not so much as that, surely?” Gold flashed her the predatory smile he did so well. It was still late afternoon, the light rich and buttery, but he seemed to be soaking it into himself as he stood there, a dark one both great and terrible. “You knew I’d come for you. For you both.”

“Aye, perhaps.” Emma held his gaze, stony and unflinching. “I didn’t know you’d break a deal once you’d given your word.”

Gold shrugged. “Previous arrangements are irrelevant, dearie. Your. . . friend here changed all that, when he killed my champion.”

“And you’re a sore loser, crocodile,” Killian snarled from the corner. “I beat the bastard fairly and cut his throat before a hundred thousand witnesses. You gave your word that you would honor the agreement. Release the lady from her betrothal to your imbecile of a son, and never breathe a word of any of this affair. To anyone.”

“Oh.” Gold’s smile widened. “I will.”

“You – what?” Killian clearly hadn’t expected that. He frowned, momentarily at a loss.

“Indeed. I am fully prepared to honor the arrangement I made. So long as you, my stubborn friend, are prepared to play _your_ part.”

Killian’s jaw tightened. “And that is?”

“Leave,” Gold said bluntly. “Go and never be seen again. Go back to whatever wretched little soggy hellpit you crawled out of in Hibernia, conduct your life in peace. But never be seen in any realm or territory or province of the Roman Empire again, as long as you live, or my wrath will make the Furies look well-mannered. On you, on her, and the Aurelius family and name altogether. So make your choice. Are you willing to bring that down on the world? On her?”

Silence. Then Killian said hoarsely, “No.”

“A sensible thought. I barely knew it could be managed.” The consul raised an eyebrow.

“Why not just kill me?”

“Ah, but that’s not in the cards for you, sonny boy. I prefer to leave you alive, to suffer. So then. I have _your_ word that you’ll go?”

“No,” Emma interrupted. “No, I won’t – ”

“Do you want him to stay, then? Want me to reveal your dirty little dalliance to the world?” Gold grinned. “I can, you know. I would like nothing better than to destroy you root and branch, if you give me the opportunity. Or you can come back to Rome and have your life returned to you, exactly as it was. And the slave even gets to live as well, just not here. I am nothing if not merciful, dearies.”

Both Killian and Emma were silent. He caught her eye and shook his head minutely. _No._

Emma choked down the thickness in her throat. She was terribly aware that he was right, that she could not be responsible for visiting this kind of devastation on everything and everyone she knew and loved, could not brave Gold’s boundless and unending and most imaginative malice. _I have to let go of him._ If there was any other choice, any way they could possibly stay at each other’s side – but there wasn’t. Just a lifetime of wondering what might have been, what could have. _Nothing._ Not remembering, or something, anything else, would be kinder. She longed for a Circe to work a spell, for magic, for sweet oblivion. But knowledge would be her curse.

Killian found his voice first. “And so you’re going to exile me now?”

“You’re leaving tomorrow at dawn. There will be a ship waiting for you in the harbor. I advise you be on it. After which, I expect this. . . associate here will convey the lady Aurelia back to Rome, and we can all go on with our lives.” Gold glanced at them both, deliberately. “You will agree that I could have crushed you into dust, and did not?”

Silence. Towering, immutable, infinite. A muscle worked in Killian’s cheek, but he said nothing. Neither would Emma; they would not thank their enemy for anything. But Gold shrugged, as if it mattered very little to him in the end. Turned on his heel, and walked out.

\----------------

That night was the only one they truly had, was to be the last memory or moment or glimpse or breath or dream of each other, and they knew it. They had each other once and then again and a third time, with a need that could never be met, that only grew deeper and more desperate every time, tasting and touching, fitting together, rising and riding above each other in the dim glow of starlight. She had never known such a coupling was possible, that man and woman could pleasure each other like this, that she could see him, that he could be there under her fingers, in her arms, in her. It seemed impossible that the air he charged, the space he took, should so soon slack away and fade and dwindle to greyness and nothing. That as long as she lived, for months or years or decades, she would only have the memory.

She would not let him see her weep. Nor would he let her. But she tasted the salt on his cheeks nonetheless when she kissed him.

Near dawn they lay entangled, dreading the daylight and the end that was coming, naked in body and mind and soul, holding each other, breathing slow. Emma ran her hand down the lines of Killian’s spine, pressed a kiss into his sweaty dark hair, listened to him whispering in Gaelic and didn’t have the heart to ask him what he was saying. Then slowly and badly and reluctantly, they roused themselves and dressed. Could gaze down to the harbor and see the ship riding at anchor in the outgoing tide, just as promised, and knew that time ran short.

Emma walked with him out of the villa, to the shore. Torches flickered on the prow like earthbound stars. Killian turned to embrace her one more time, to crush her to him, his mouth opening and musing against hers, and she clung to him as if she could never let go. But at last she had to. Become Penelope after all, once and for good. As she watched him wade out and climb aboard, as the oars came out and began to pull, as the ship began to move out on the glassy water, as it grew lighter, as daylight broke. As she stood there in the shallows, hair and chiton whipping in the wind, until there was nothing left but a faint shadow on the face of the deep, and the grey ship had been accepted by the sea.


	7. Epilogue

**_Eleven Years Later_ **

The servants were loading the last of the trunks, and the villa stood almost empty, looking somehow smaller than Emma had always thought, shrunken. She stood out of the way, dressed for traveling in a hooded mantle and stola and gartered leggings, blonde braid falling down her back. Couldn’t decide if she wanted to gather up every memory of this place that she could, or close her eyes and never look back. Even if they did return to Rome at some point in the future, it was unlikely they’d be living here. Emperor Hadrian was dead, had died last month, and his successor, Antoninus Pius, was determined to expand the fortunes of the empire in far-off Britain and Caledonia. For this he needed a new territorial governor, and for that he needed competent administrators. When he asked David Aurelius, it was not precisely a request.

Emma was well aware that this apparent honor did not come without a sting in the tail. Well-respected, long-serving _praetors urbanii_ were not plucked from the heart of Rome and banished to the back of beyond, in one of the empire’s most peripheral provinces, unless there was good reason for it, and as Antoninus had otherwise left intact most of Hadrian’s bureaucracy, she suspected that Gaius Flavius Cassianus’ hand was pulling the strings. But so it was. David was named the new governor of Britannia, and they faced a long overland journey north to Londinium, the trading post and bustling merchant colony that served as the capital. Emma knew very little about their destination except that it was said to be foggy and green and temperate, a stark change from the sun and sea and heat of Rome, a thousand miles and a thousand more, everything she had ever wanted in leaving, to see the furthest corners of the empire. And yet when it came –

She was crying again. She smudged the heel of her hand angrily across her eyes, swallowing hard. When her father first told her the news, she’d objected to leaving, but he had gently told her that he and her mother thought it was best, it truly was, that she accompany them to Londinium and leave the past in the past. And David Aurelius was _paterfamilias,_ had power over his children as long as he lived, and hence Emma could not legally refuse. Perhaps it was for the best, after all. She was almost thirty, unwed, clearly an old maid, used goods. A fresh start couldn’t be the worst, somewhere nobody knew them, knew her. It was just –

She didn’t want to leave her son.

Foolish, she reminded herself. Foolish. Marius Henricus Maximinus had just marked his tenth year, a lively and engaging and precocious boy with a mop of black hair and dancing blue eyes, doted on by the childless, well-to-do plebeian couple who had adopted him at birth. He knew Emma only as the noblewoman who had taken an interest in his patronage and education, and would see him on festivals and feast days, or on a few occasions when she came to call on his parents. He had no idea about the rest of it. How she’d carried him for nine long and lonely months in seclusion at the villa, almost as if she was in prison, far away from the watching eyes and gossiping tongues. Watched her belly grow, felt him kicking, brought him forth in blood and pain, then been told that it was best for everyone that she not see him again. To give him his best chance, he would never know that he was born the bastard son of a scandal and a slave. He could still grow up and contribute fruitfully to Roman society, without that cloud hanging over his head. It had taken her two years to argue for even being able to see him, strictly as his patroness.

Young Henricus would never know. No one would. How for months afterwards her body had been raw and agonized and tender and throbbing, knowing only that it had borne a child and then lost it; she hadn’t even held the baby before they took him away, not wanting to make it worse. Gods, she had been naïve. There was no way not to. But this – leaving and knowing that she might never have another moment with him at all, ever again – was the worst.

She didn’t even know if it was possible for her to start over in Londinium. It had been so long since she had even tried. After she had returned from her exile, it was to be greeted with the news that Baelius had been shipped off to Gaul in some official capacity or other, with vague promises and excuses about the wedding being postponed until he was prepared to support her in fitting style. Thus it went on for over a year, until the news finally arrived that the wedding was now postponed forever due to Baelius heroically perishing in a border skirmish against the Goths. To her confusion, Emma had grieved. Perhaps it was due to her feeling so lonely that even he would have been some company. Yet every time she thought about coming out from behind the walls that grew higher all the time, she couldn’t face the prospect.

And so, year after year had gone by. One much the same as the next. She became ever more a hermit. Did not want anything to do with high Roman society, with her mother’s insistence that they should try to find her a new match before she became altogether too old, with anyone’s well-meant efforts to break her out of her shell. Sometimes it felt that all she was living for were those few scattered days with Henricus. Leaving him hurt more every time.

Aye, then. She should go. Eleven years had passed. Even if Killian had made it back to his homeland alive, he was either wed to another woman or dead in a ditch, slaughtered as a Celtic rebel. Like as not, he barely even remembered her. Londinium was far closer to Hibernia than was Rome, but Emma couldn’t think of that. It would only hurt her more. There _was_ a hope, the faintest thread, that she’d reach Britain and somehow find him, that he’d hear of the new provincial governor's name and put two and two together, but that was nothing more than a girlish fantasy. She couldn’t believe it. Couldn't let herself. Even if, after all this time, she had never stopped loving him. Never would.

The last things were aboard. It was time to go. She swallowed shakily, bracing herself, then was interrupted by a sudden, boyish shout. “Mistress Aurelia! Wait!”

Her heart choked her throat. She turned around, clutching her fingernails into her palm, to see Henricus running toward her, his adoptive parents strolling behind. “Wait,” he panted again. “I wanted to say farewell before you go.”

Emma, not trusting herself to words, nodded. She knelt to his level, grasping his shoulders, and looked into those blue eyes that gazed back so innocently, unwitting. “Be good,” she told him. “I’ll return to Rome in a few years, you know, and I’ll want to see that you’re making good progress in your studies, your plans to be a general and command a legion.”

“Aye.” Henricus nodded earnestly. “I’ll be a great warrior, a hero. I’ll make you proud.”

 _I am sure you will. I am sure._ “Listen to Mistress Milia,” Emma managed. Regina had announced that the rest of them could do as they pleased, but under no circumstances did _she_ intend to exile herself to the backwater of Britannia. One of the few who knew the truth of Henricus’ birth, she had taken an unexpected shine to the lad and had promised Emma that she would be as a second mother to him. “She’ll be sending me letters, on how you’re faring.”

Henricus nodded sadly. “I know. I still wish you didn’t have to go.”

Emma searched his face, tried to find anything, any words a ten-year-old boy could hear, anything he could know without destroying his world. _When he’s older,_ she told herself. _When I return._ But to hell with protocol, with appearances, with the gestures a patrician noblewoman should make to a plebeian’s son, she reached out and gathered him into a brief, hard embrace. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding tight, and she closed her eyes as her shoulders shook, hot tears seeping out under her lashes. In that moment, the world could have ended and she would not have cared, but eventually it had to go on. She let go and stepped back and managed a smile for him. “Be good,” she whispered again. “Be good.”

Henricus nodded, looking somewhat tremulous himself. Emma looked and looked, trying to cram all those missing years into the span of a few moments, but at last she had to turn away. Pulling up her hood to hide the tears still streaming down her face, she crossed the courtyard and climbed into the cart with her parents. Watched and watched as her son grew smaller and dwindled, waving until he was out of sight, as they rolled down Palatine Hill for the last time and out toward the great city gates, carts and beasts of burden, slaves and soldiers, setting out on the two-month journey to Britain. With the sunlight beating down, out of this life and this moment, moving on for the next one, with all the open road ahead of her.


End file.
